Dozens of debris from the explosion, including leather chairs and sheets of metal, fly throughout the air, many of the shards on a direct collision course with my body.
I close my eyes as the blast of heat and wind from the explosion of the engine hits me, but with it no pain follows. All of the shards of metal and other debris from the plane are either shot down by the detector drones or dodged by the spotter drone that work in tandem to keep me alive.
These things are fucking magic.
A surge of confidence flows through me as the spotter drone wildly bucks downward. For a moment I fear that the battery is running out and that I am now plummeting to my death. But instead, the spotter drone has a new kind of surprise.
It flips me upside down, rendering the grip my legs have on the glass exterior useless. The only thing keeping me glued to the spotter drone is the super tape, the hot adhesive liquid burning the skin on my butt.
“C’mon,” I scream, firing the energy blaster blindly in the air, hoping that it knocks out a few more of the aircraft. This rollercoaster ride from hell is one that I won’t be able to endure for much longer. Every second that I am bucked wildly in a new direction or spun upside down without warning, a rush of blood threatens to overcome my consciousness for the final time.
The taste of vomit is fresh in my mouth and all sense of kinesthesia has been long lost in my body. I have no idea what to do. The detector drones are unable to do much in the way of attacking the surrounding aircraft, and although they do a great job at intercepting all incoming projectiles before they hit me, it doesn’t change the horrid circle fuck I am stuck in.
The military has for all intents and purposes unlimited ammo and supplies. My body and brain will wear out far faster than their stores of ammunition and the fuel in their aircrafts. And it is only a matter of time until the smoke inhalation finally eats my lungs alive.
With every missile that is intercepted and bomb that explodes only a few dozen feet away from me, the dark cloud of smoke surrounding me only grows thicker. Neither the spotter drone nor the detector drones can save me from my inevitable fate.
I am going to die.
Here’s another edition of Sam does something that hopefully doesn’t get him killed but probably will.
I take a deep breath, firing one last burst of energy orbs into the madness. I can’t even see the outlines of the detector drones or the aircrafts to know if I am shooting in the right direction. All I know is that with the ensuing eruption of fire, the blue and red orbs connect with something.
And the smoke and other toxins that are emitted into the air will only add to the chances that I end up dead soon. I can’t win a war of attrition. I can’t let them wear me out until the batteries of the drones die and fall thousands of feet to the ground.
So I open up the bag with the Chimera Cube and take one risk that I know I won’t regret. And that’s because if it doesn’t work out, I won’t live long enough to regret anything.
Time for chaos.
“Ten thousand attack drones,” I utter the command. The bag with the Chimera Cube in it zipped open just a tad so that the nanobots can disperse throughout the smoke. The ash and other particulates in the air flood my eyeballs every time I open them, leaving me with no choice but to close my eyes and hope for the best.
The spotter drone flips me upside down once again as it tries to dodge the formation of the swarm of attack drones around us. Ten thousand of them take up so much space in the air that they practically form their own cloud. From memory, I know what the attack drones are supposed to look like. They are about six feet tall and only two feet wide with large arm-looking extensions on either side of them. Those extensions are packed with missiles, enough to blow up a few of these aircrafts, and when I multiply that by ten thousand, the amount of firepower becomes almost unfathomable.
The attack drones are simply programmed to attack anything and everything in sight that isn’t directly around the cube.
Everything is about to blow up. The detector drones will be finished, all of the planes will descend into balls of fire. I will be the only thing left. That is if my body isn’t added to the mix of the wreckage along with everything else.
I zip the bag with the Chimera Cube inside it and wrap my legs around the cube. Every second, the hot liquid gluing me to the drone loses a bit of its strength. I am connected to this cube by a string of gooey fibers that could snap in half at any moment.
But the prospect of me falling off the spotter drone becomes the least of my worries in a matter of seconds. The gunfire reaches a new intensity as the rounds of explosions being intercepted by the detector drones create a ring of fire around me. The spotter drone continues to effortlessly dodge all the incoming projectiles, leaving my body virtually unscathed except for a few pieces of shrapnel colliding with my bullet-proof suit.
But then everything reaches its boiling point.
The added impact of the swarm of attack drones throws everything over the edge. What was once a traumatic rollercoaster ride through the night sky and smoke-filled air becomes a ballistic shit show the moment all the attack drones are activated. With the heavy smoke, it is hard for me to discern where the attack drones are.
That is until I realize that the mass of blackness blocking all light from reaching my eyes is not the smoke but is instead the backs of the attack drones that are plated in steel. They don’t waste any time going right at it. At almost the same exact moment, tens of thousands of projectiles are released simultaneously upon the surrounding aircrafts.
At first it appears as if it’s one futuristic firework show, one that thousands of people would gather to watch on the ground and cheer with excitement at the explosives light up the night sky. The only thing is that if this were a firework show, everyone on the ground would be dead.
The awing beauty of the eruption of fire quickly turns into a wave of death as the fire and force from the hundreds of explosions extend in all directions. This is one massive bomb. And I’m at the center of it.
Not even the spotter drone can save me from this. The detector drones have long ago been destroyed. All the aircraft are about to crash into the ground, my victory forever cemented in this battle.
But I might be going down right with them.
The wave of force is too much for even the tape to withstand. Right as the spotter drone turns me upside down to attempt and dodge the projectiles, I am thrown off it. The force of the thousands of tiny explosions amalgamate into one massive wave that absorbs me in one mind-numbing surge of energy.
I don’t think I’m dead, but there are multiple moments where I feel nothing but the flames tearing through me. Then the force of gravity takes hold of my body. No longer am I riding on top of a glass ball, flying like a wizard through the chaos.
I am falling to the earth.
With the smoke and shrapnel encasing my vision, it is impossible to tell how far the fall will be to the ground below. But I know the second my body collides with the ground, I will die. A smoldering drone smashes into my side, the sensation of a hundred-pound metal ball of flames one that threatens to suffocate my consciousness permanently. I have lost all orientation of my limbs, the pain from the shrapnel cutting through my bullet-proof suit reaching a new intensity.
My stomach drops out of my body once again, but I no longer have the desire to vomit boil up in my throat. All I want to do is close my eyes and let this hell end. I want to give up.
But I know I can’t.
The moment I give in to the pain and the force of gravity pulling me down to the earth, the cube will fall into the Syndicate’s hand. The world will fall into their hands.
And I’ll do anything to prevent that.
I’ll put myself through hell for years if it means all the loved ones that they took from me won’t die in vain. And it’s the thought of my mother, and her crisp blue eyes and warm smile, that gives me the extra motivation to power through the pain.
I should be dead.
/> I’m bleeding out in multiple places of my body, the ringing in my mind has taken over to become the only thing that accompanies the pain swathing my nerves, and the smoke that filled the sky seconds ago has been replaced by a hail storm of metal shards and pieces of the drone that hit my body in a continuous wave.
There is nothing to protect me from the madness surrounding me. There is nothing to stop me from the impact that awaits. I feel my speed pick up as gravity continues to torture my muscles, the force of the air resistance alone stings as it presses against my face.
There is only one way out of this.
I’d normally say a hoverboard.
But my legs are too cut up and my coordination too disoriented to attempt and balance on the hoverboard without ending my life in a more horrific way. That’s exactly why I hastily zip open the bag that contains the cube and command it to create what may be the dumbest yet most ingenious thing I’ve thought of yet.
A balloon.
The helium inside it will naturally want to rise above the composition of the atmosphere, giving me, in theory, a nice shield of sorts to work against gravity and ease my fall onto the ground below.
The cube pokes out of the bag as I deliver it the command, my shaking arm that is dripping with blood barely able to keep its composure long enough to tap the cube. The string of the balloon appears right in front of my eyes.
In this moment I have zero margin of error.
I can either grab the string and hold on tight or miss and continue my hectic spiral downward towards what will be an inevitable death. The pressure and pain are so great that my body is unable to register their full intensity. I reach my hand out in what my mind thinks is a controlled manner, but my arm ends up spasming and flailing wildly anyways.
This should be the end of me. This should be my final moment where the loss of blood and my momentum downward finally lead to my death.
But I manage to pull through.
When I feel the grip of the thick string in my hand, a new round of adrenaline courses through me. The string is designed to be tied around a person’s waist, but that will be impossible for me to do. Instead, I use my other hand to keep the cube in the bag that has its zipper open and is dangling off the side of my body.
I am a total mess.
And holding on to the balloon doesn’t seem to do much to improve my situation. Instead of allowing me to combat the force of gravity like I had hoped, my velocity only increases with every passing second. And mind you, this balloon is not your everyday balloon you find in a party store. It is twenty feet in diameter with a bullet-proof shell and an aerodynamic design that is made to guide soldiers to the ground safely.
Finally, it starts to do its job. No longer do I feel the weight of my body growing heavier by the second as the wind continues to force the blood dripping out of my cheeks into my eyes. Within moments, the balloon effectively resists gravity, allowing my once hectic fall to turn into more of a graceful glide down to the earth below.
Inside the miles-thick wall of smoke, I can see the outlines of the peaks of the surrounding mountains. Most of the fire has already fallen beneath me, the once endless ring of explosions and gunfire ending to leave nothing but a dull crackling in its place.
For a moment, life is great.
I even manage to smile at the scenery of the United States military laid waste and I being the only one left standing.
Then the balloon pops.
I really am a fucking idiot.
One of the thousands of pieces of metal shards that was catapulted into the sky falls back down to earth directly onto the balloon. Even with the bullet-proof exterior, the sharpness and velocity of the shard is too much for the material to handle.
Within a second, the fabric lining the gaseous balloon tears open and all the gas that keeps me floating in the air exits the balloon in the blink of an eye. There is nothing to stop me from colliding with the ground.
I am in free fall.
I scream, not with fear or sadness, but anger. I fumble as I let go of the balloon and try to wrap both my arms around the bag with the Chimera Cube. But it’s too late. The sudden change of momentum and jerking of the bag that dangles off my body is the only disruption the cube needs to exit my grasp.
The cube is falling to the earth.
And I am falling right with it.
Chapter 13
It does no use for me to even try and grab the cube. It is much denser than my body, the force of air resistance doing a terrible job at combating its plummet into the darkness. All that is left for me to do is let the force of gravity overcome my muscles and let the pain and blackness suffocate my consciousness.
The idea of death seems comfortable. Especially when considering that my surroundings are full of wrecked aircrafts, fire, smoke, and toxins from hundreds of missiles.
But instead of death, I feel the pound of my body against a hard sheet of pavement. At least, it feels like pavement. Then, after a second, I recognize the moisture that swathes every bit of my skin. I open my mouth and the flood of water into my throat confirms my suspicion.
I have landed in water.
An icy, dark, endless mass of water that the cube is sinking into. And I’m sinking right along with it. I try and have my brain communicate with my body that I need to get moving.
That I need to try and survive.
But the shock of my body hitting against the water at such a high speed is still settling in. The water around me is infested with thick pockets of blood. My blood. And the cube has sunk into the network of wreckage that has filled the lake.
It might just be easier to give up.
It might just be easier to let the pain that makes my spinal cord feel like it’s been snapped into a million pieces end. I scream. The air bubbles exude from my mouth in a thick column as the water rushes to diffuse into my airways.
No one can hear me.
No one will ever hear me.
My body is only minutes away from being left at the bottom of this lake forever. The world is just moments away from being in the hands of the Syndicate permanently.
But one last surge of energy kicks in when I see the outline of the cube out of the corner of my eye. It is sinking slower than I’d expect, the mysterious material that coats the outside of the cube having a notable amount of buoyancy.
I can survive.
I can keep the world in my hands.
Just one final push.
Yet, the reality of my situation seeps into my bones along with the cold water as I push deeper into its wrath. This is never going to end.
I fucking hate swimming.
And I mean that. I have never been good at it. In fact, cold water is my least favorite thing in the world ahead of the Syndicate, Li Wang, Drew (okay, this list goes on, so maybe it’s not my least favorite thing in the world, but I still strongly dislike it).
Somehow, I’m always the lucky one that despite my distaste for aquatic activities frequently finds myself having to somehow make it out alive of a do-or-die situation in the middle of a cold body of water. This time, I am dozens of feet beneath the surface, the lack of oxygen the least of my problems as I try and chase the cube before it hits the bottom of the lake.
Blood trickles out of my arms and legs as I swing my limbs wildly, trying to do everything in my power to bring the cube back under my control. After roughly a minute of doing my best at summoning my inner Olympic swimmer, I am able to catch up to the cube.
I wrap my arms around it, the joy instantly giving me the needed rush of adrenaline to get back up to the surface. By the time my head pokes out from the surface of the lake, my lungs are burning, and I have lost so much blood that just mustering the strength to tap the cube again is a miracle.
The cold water has a different effect on my body when inhaled compared to warmer water. It has a way of tightening the muscles in my diaphragm and neck, making the act of trying to expel the excess water from my airways a painful, rigid act.
&n
bsp; I command the Chimera Cube to initiate external wound repair on me, but its magical army of nanobots do nothing to fix the cloudiness coating my mind from the smoke inhalation and lack of oxygen. They also do nothing to fix my internal temperature that is all out of whack from the frigid water that probably has already given me some stage of hypothermia.
Why did I do this?
I take a deep breath, a wave of sadness overcoming me for the first time since this madness has started. With my life not in any imminent danger, I have a free moment to take a step back and breathe. Well, I shouldn’t say a step back, more of a light kick of my feet as I work to keep my head above the water and hands gripped around the cube. The same backpack that the cube has spent most of its life in is still strapped around one of my shoulders, my heart racing as the anxiety over almost losing the cube slowly deflates from my system.
I tap on the cube again, commanding it to create a raft that I can jump up on. The darkness has now completely settled over the landscape, the thick smoke encasing the body of water blocking the view of all the surrounding mountains. The only thing that is visible besides the still surface of the water is the fire burning through the remnants of the hundreds of tiny pieces of the aircrafts that fell around the lake.
I’m at the center of a ginormous ring of fire, yet, if I close my eyes and ignore the stench of gasoline and smoke in my nose, I could trick myself into thinking that I am spending a romantic evening canoeing in a pond. The silence that blankets the air is disturbing—it creates the kind of chilling atmosphere that causes every hair on my body to stand up and my muscles to tense with fear.
There isn’t one soldier shouting for help or even any animals or birds howling in the night. It’s just me, all alone in the middle of a lake with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.
The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2 Page 63