The military may know exactly where I am and have drones flying through this cloud of destruction ready to kill me. The gunfire and explosions continuing to echo over the lake could all just be a show. My army of robots and drones may be completely finished. This all might be just one elaborate distraction to try and make my last few moments alive as terrible as possible.
The thought of the Syndicate winning and Drew sitting on a diamond throne made from the Chimera Cube gives me the last bit of motivation I need. Thinking about Beijing and letting the horror of the nuke come back to me is the one reminder that if I don’t make it out of this alive, humanity won’t either.
“Twenty-foot force field,” I scream at the cube, hoping that by some stroke of luck in the second it takes for the force field to form that no missile is launched through the cloud of smoke towards me.
Five heavy breaths and one mini heart attack later and I am still clutching on to the hoverboard with one hand. The one glimmer of hope in the cloud of dirt around me is the hundreds of sparks that erratically shoot through the smoke.
The force field must be working. As the particulates of dirt and smoke collide with it and the missiles of the military are propelled off the bubble the force field forms around me, I know I am safe. Now all I need to do is manage to get my body on top of the hoverboard and my feet into the straps.
That maneuver will be a lot harder than it sounds.
The fire that forms the exhaust of the hoverboard is still digging into my flesh. Although it’s not as direct as before, the flames have left a large swath of the flesh on my left arm completely eradicated from the fire. My flesh is discolored as blood oozes out of the bubbly wounds that the flames form.
The Chimera Cube can heal that wound in seconds, but I will be trapped in an endless cycle of having my arm burned off unless I can do a muscle-up to pull my body up to the top of the hoverboard. All the meanwhile I will need to keep my movements controlled so that the force of my body weight doesn’t send the hoverboard flying in a wild pattern throughout the destruction.
I can do this. I can do this.
The familiar voice echoes inside my head. The only reason I say it’s familiar is because it’s me attempting to talk myself up in a moment when the pressure is weighing so heavy on me that every muscle in my arm shakes.
Correction: the pressure is definitely getting to me, but my arm is shaking because it can’t stand to hold me up any longer.
I need to push through.
“Agh!” I yell, hoping that the exertion of every muscle in my body at once will lead me to engage my muscle fibers at maximum capacity. The move proves to be much less graceful than I imagined, but the screaming effectively gets my stomach onto the board, my arms and legs hanging off the thing on either side of me. All my appendages are now free from the flames, the cube hanging on to my body by one single strap attached to my left shoulder.
The next step in the process proves to be even harder than the first. I use both my hands to attempt and push myself up to stand on top of the hoverboard, but the moment I apply pressure down on the hoverboard, my world spins out of control.
The hoverboard jerks downward, sending my body right along with it. To compensate for that move, I try to pull upward on the hoverboard, but with my erratic movements, the board instead moves to the side. My already bloody, beaten-up body can barely withstand the jarring acceleration pulling me in a million directions at once.
Within a few seconds, realizing that all my attempts at stopping this hoverboard from going haywire are ineffective, I halt my panicked movements. Soon the board returns to a sort of equilibrium, with the ground a couple hundred feet below me and the chaos encasing the force field only picking up with time.
The force from the bombs that collide with the edge of the force field alone fills my ears with enough chaos to drive me mad. The shower of sparks that litter every inch of space within the force field only make me shake more with terror.
I know what they are trying to do.
They want to destroy this force field with the force of their firepower alone.
I make one last desperate attempt at getting on top of the board. This time I use my feet instead of my hands, and clutch on to the bag with the Chimera Cube. At least I know if I fall, I will die with this thing in my grasp. And with any luck they will never be able to blast through this force field.
A heavy gust of wind smacks me right as I am in the middle of standing up, my arms flailing as I try and maintain my center of gravity right at the center of the board. This is one of the only moments in my life that I regret not taking dance classes—if only I were more limber and agile, I’d make surfing through the air on a hoverboard look easy.
Instead, I look more like a dog trying to stand up on its hind legs, the entire movement so unnatural for me that I am bound to crash back down to the ground. But a second later I find myself standing on top of the hoverboard, my legs shaking with my muscles taking on the same consistency as gelatin.
I have no idea how I just did that.
But all the credit goes to the cocaine.
“Wohoo!” I shout in joy, this moment of me successfully standing up on a hoverboard now up there with the surges of endorphins that have accompanied some of the greatest moments of my life.
I slide both my bare feet into the straps on the hoverboard, my toes all mangled and bloody from the cuts and bruises that line every inch of my skin. With one simple command delivered to the Chimera Cube, all the pain from those cuts and the blood dripping out of too many places to count on my body stops. The pounding sensation in my head and the dull pain from all the bruises on my body doesn’t let up, but the cocaine does a great job of numbing me to all of it until I have enough time to command the cube for internal wound repair.
Every second matters now.
And if things go my way, every last person in the military within miles will be dead before the sun sets below the horizon. In the last rays of light, I have one last chance to survive.
One last chance to save the world.
And if that means killing everyone around me, so be it.
I’ve been through too much to let that thought keep me up at night. I smile as I look down at my torn-up, blood-soaked white covering and pale skin beneath it all.
If anyone ever saw me like this, they would never assume I am the most powerful man in the world. They would never think that I have the power to make this world mine overnight.
But I do. At least the cocaine is telling me I do.
And I intend to use it.
Chapter 12
This may be a really dramatic way of killing myself.
No matter what happens, I can say I made history. To my knowledge I will be the only human ever to have died while trying to fight the United States military with blasts of energy orbs all while flying through the sky on the back of a drone.
Why do I do this to myself? Why do I put myself through this hell?
I’ll tell you that right now, I am regretting taking the cocaine, because odds are my sober mind would veto the decision I am about to make. I pull up on the straps of the hoverboard with my feet, sending my body flying through the sky. The force with which I command the hoverboard to rocket upwards is jarring, to say the least. All the liquid and food in my stomach from earlier pumps up to my mouth in a hot, disgusting liquid.
I hold it back from coming out of my mouth, but it instead finds its way out of my nostrils and drips down my face in a manner that is even more unsettling than if I had just let it spew out of me. The frequency of the projectiles connecting with the force field continue to pick up even as I reach hundreds of feet in altitude above the surrounding peaks. No longer are only explosives and bullets connecting with the exterior of the electrical field. The military is now using lasers and plasma weapons as well, every single particle of their blasts being repelled by the force field.
This thing is unbreakable.
They can shoot millions of rounds of amm
o at it for hundreds of years and it will never break. The only way to possibly shatter the field is to overwhelm the nanoparticles with a wave of electromagnetic energy of equal or greater force. At first thought, that seems like an impossibility, but one thought of the enemy at hand and I know that the probability of them being able to break this force field is high.
Every millisecond, their artificial intelligence is analyzing the force field and learning more about me and how I operate. Once they can get their predictive algorithms to map my future locations and find a way to halt my progress, they can trap me inside this force field.
They will kill me.
And the longer this goes on, the more likely that is going to happen sooner rather than later.
I need to kill them now.
Fuck. I sigh, thrusting the hoverboard to the side as I try to navigate through the madness. It’s almost impossible to tell whether I am about to hit a mountain or fly into the middle of a pack of military drones. With the absurd rate at which the projectiles connect with the force field, it has clouded my entire vision in a field of fire, smoke, and occasional flashing lights from the lasers being shot at me. And the nearly continuous blasting of my ear drums by deafening sound waves turns my panicked thoughts into dull screams echoing in my mind.
All that matters is that I’m not dead yet, and for the moment that’s good enough. But I know I’m in a flying prison. And every second I stay in here, I increase the chances of the military trapping me in here for good.
My first instinct was to try and outrun the United States military and hide out somewhere. Not only is that idea impossible to accomplish with the Syndicate sharing my location with them, but this hoverboard moves at a snail’s pace compared to the rates of the military jets.
But I know what moves faster.
“Spotter drone,” I scream so that the cube can register my command above the symphony of weaponized terror. I double-tap the surface of the cube. Right as the green wave of light protrudes over the top, the spotter drone forms in front of me.
I push downward with my toes onto the hoverboard so that the sensors embedded into the bottom detect my desire to decelerate. I stop right as the nanobots assemble the spotter drone in its full glory. A rush of blood briefly knocks me off course as my body adjusts to its internal equilibrium being tossed off a cliff with the abrupt change in momentum.
With nightfall sucking all the light out of the sky and the thick cloud of destruction surrounding the force field, it is hard to see the spotter drone even when it’s right in front of me. But its sleek glass body is exactly what I remember it looking like.
This is one of the favorite weapons that Jake and I found during our time studying the library of items that the Chimera Cube can produce. It’s designed to be a spy drone that can fly into enemy military compounds and absorb data about their supplies and weapons. It is even able to fly into the middle of combat and detect enemy formations and report them back to a hive mind that other hardware are connected to and then can optimize their own behavior. Or in my case, I can fly on the back of it, and hope that by some miracle it doesn’t kill me.
I slide my feet out of the hoverboard and put my two legs around the spotter drone. It is spherical in shape and its translucent glass exterior has the appearance of an eyeball of a cyclops. At the bottom of the spotter drone is a large propeller with dozens of tiny blades that are designed to cut through the air and give the drone as much mobility as possible.
Watching this magical eyeball-like drone whizz through the sky as defense robots try to shoot at it is one of the most entertaining things. But nothing about the mission I have to engage in now is entertaining in the slightest.
There is one button that that will activate the drone into spy mode and out of its dull state in hover mode. I have no clue once I press the button at the top of the drone that is right between my legs whether it will throw me off or if it will be unable to handle my weight as it tries to dodge all the missiles.
The drone itself is only about four feet in diameter, and its exterior is slippery at best. All it will take is having my balance teeter a fraction of a degree and I will be thrown off the drone to plummet to my death thousands of feet below.
“Bullet-proof suit.” The feeling of the cube that rests in my lap producing the suit is a high that I will never get enough of. I grip my legs around the sides of the drone as I slip the light, protective material over my arms. Then I wedge my legs into it, miraculously without falling off.
In the few seconds that I have remained motionless inside the center of the force field, the firepower has only increased. Any minute they will find a way to burst this force field open.
Not even this suit will be able to protect me from their blasts.
“Super tape.” I utter the command and swiftly grab the roll of clear tape that appears above the internal components of the Chimera Cube that are folded open with thousands of tiny lights blinking every second. The name for the tape is another one of the generic names my dad gave to an item produced by the Chimera Cube, likely thinking that it was the coolest thing ever at the time.
I take a large piece of the roll of tape and stick it on my butt that is lifted a few inches off the drone. When I place it back down on the drone, my hopes are that the hot, sticky fibers mold to my ass and the glass exterior of the drone simultaneously so that no matter what happens, I can stick to it.
Instead of stress testing the tape to see if it works, I command the cube to create the army that will allow me to ensure that I can avoid missiles, lasers, rays of plasma, and any other deadly projectiles at all costs. It’s a team of detector drones, their purpose quite simple: to detect and destroy any oncoming missiles and enemies. They operate in a similar way to the force field in that they keep the cube at the center, but unlike the nearly impenetrable force field, the drones allow me to fire back at the enemies.
This is good in that it gives me the chance to wipe out all the military aircrafts pursing me.
The downside is that they are imperfect, and with thousands of rounds being fired at me, the chances of them missing one are quite high.
But I have to take the risk.
A few moments after uttering the command, twenty of the detector drones form in my immediate surroundings. They have multiple photon blasters sticking out from them on all sides, designed to intercept and destroy the missiles. And just like the spotter drone I am seated on, they are circular but instead of being surrounded in glass they have infrared sensors embedded into their exterior.
Now my army is assembled. It is at first glance puny in size when compared to the might of the United States military, but there is one missing ingredient that may just throw me over the edge.
“Energy blaster,” I command the Chimera Cube and double-tap on it immediately. The cube is still safely nestled in the backpack, its internal systems immune to the destruction taking place around it. However, I am acutely aware of the fact that every millisecond longer it takes me to initiate my attack could be the difference between the world being in control of the Syndicate or this world becoming a real-life Zion.
What appears in front of me is one of the most beautiful creations I have ever seen. The energy blaster is in reality just a high-powered ray gun that shoots concentrated packets of photons at any desired location. The blaster is massive in size, the back end of it easily weighing one hundred pounds. The barrel is extremely long, well over three feet in length and sticks out far in front of my face. All I have to do is press down on the trigger with this thing gripped in my hands and hope that it connects with one of the aircrafts.
On impact, the entire thing will explode.
It’s game time. I try and talk myself up and get pumped for the occasion, but I feel more of a desperation than anything else. I know what’s at stake right now if I lose.
I have to destroy everything around me.
“Deconstruct force field.” I utter the one command that I’m not sure will result in an elab
orate form of self-destruction or an ingenious way to defeat the military. In the same instance that the force field deconstructs, I press down on the button on top of the spotter drone.
Then the floodgates open.
I can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything quite like this. The immediate change from having hundreds of projectiles every few seconds bouncing off the force field to them now all inundating the immediate air space around me, threatening to tear my body to pieces, is jarring, to say the least.
I press down on the trigger of the energy blaster, hoping that it has the duel effect of not hitting any of the detector drones and instead smashing through an enemy aircraft. I hear a loud explosion right after the ray of blinding light flashes out of the blaster, but I am unable to tell where the explosion came from.
Within milliseconds of me pressing the button, the spotter drone is already off to the races, dodging as many missiles and projectiles as possible. Everything spins around me in one chaotic blur as I try and digest what is happening.
One moment I am upside down rocketing to the right, while the next moment I am flying directly toward the stars and smoke in the sky above. The spotter drone has no pattern to its movements, making the task of trying to hold on and shoot orbs of energy out of the blaster the most acrobatic thing I’ve done in my life. My balls are in immense pain at the center of a split as my legs clutch around the sides of the orb.
If this tape lets up, I am going to die. I press on the trigger of the energy blaster again, the orb of energy firing out of the barrel in a beautiful splash of red and blue. This is the kind of weapon that I’d use for fun at night to show off to my friends.
But all my friends are either dead or members of the Syndicate.
My only use for this is war.
Milliseconds after I press the trigger, the orb of energy connects with an aircraft hovering around the perimeter that the detector drones form around me. On impact, the entire aircraft explodes, turning the eerie smoke that fills the dark sky into a blaze of fire. In the initial explosion, multiple bodies are visible falling out of the aircraft. They have no way to survive except for deploying their parachute and hoping it slows them down in time before they smash into the ground.
The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2 Page 62