Now we have a way in.
Sandwiched in between the patches of evergreen trees, many of which have erupted into flames, is the cement layer at the top of the grassy mound that we parked on. It has been obliterated. The once impenetrable exterior to the compound has now caved in on itself, giving us a clear pathway into the network of hallways and laboratories that make up the Moosehorn compound.
“I’ll follow you,” I scream, hoping that Anika can hear me. Holding the Chimera Cube along with a high-powered laser launcher is hard enough. Trying to direct my voice at Anika on top of that almost leads to me toppling over.
She nods in return, the red color to her eyes concentrated in two bright orbs that are surrounded in darkness.
With only a few hundred feet to go until we hit the rubble from the explosions, I start to pull up on the straps tied around my feet, bringing the hoverboard to a smooth deceleration just in time.
The missiles continue wiping out the army of attack drones. The hundreds and hundreds of drones that formed a cloud-like bubble around us are now down to only a few dozen that are left.
It will only take a minute for the others to be dead and gone for good. The intensity of the warring back and forth between the thousands of military humanoids and drones and the drones the Chimera Cube produced is beginning to die down.
The firework show has faded, leaving a trail of ash, fire, and massive clouds of smoke in its wake. Surprisingly, the attack drones didn’t even make much of a dent in the army that surrounds us. Most of the missile launchers embedded into the compound are still firing away while thousands more humanoids continue to rush out of the woods.
They have summoned a legion of robots and drones to wipe us off the face of the earth. With the hundreds of billions of dollars the government spends on defense each year, there is no doubt in my mind that there are hundreds of thousands of drones and humanoids waiting to pounce on us.
As we land back on the same spot in the cement that we took off from, I dismount from the hoverboard and prepare to journey inside the compound with Anika. We both give each other a nervous glance.
This may be impossible.
She doesn’t need to say anything for me to know that even if we manage to get to my family without being killed, we still have to destroy Maga X and get the cube out here safely without the army of humanoids and drones destroying us for good.
But their power may be too great.
The swarm grows by the second, each humanoid raising their rifles in the air, a high-pitched, painful noise emitting from their mouths as they charge at the exterior of the force field. Even as dozens of their fellow humanoids fall to the ground, they all continue to march on.
In an odd way, the spectacle is quite beautiful. To have the privilege of witnessing a bunch of machines so hell-bent on reaching their goal that they will literally walk into their death is somewhat inspiring. Well, it’s inspiring until you realize that they are all headed for you and that if you don’t run, they may very well find a way to tear through your force field and kill you.
“There’s a large room on the understory of this compound,” Anika says, hitting her stride the moment her wings fold back into herself.
I follow her, my human legs unable to gracefully spring from one piece of rubble to another as we descend into the dark hallways of the compound. All the lights inside are turned off except for a few flashing red lights accompanied by blaring sirens.
The river of rubble that welcomes us into the depths of Moosehorn is full of deadly traps, including sharp metal rods that can easily sever one’s limbs, random crevices in the cement that can trap one’s legs, and a thick layer of smoke that makes seeing even a few inches past the force field nearly impossible.
All it will take is me tripping once on the rubble and that will give the humanoids enough time to surround us. And the moment that happens, we are fucked. Even if they can never break through the electrical field of nanobots, they can trap us in a little bubble of hell forever.
And the moment we try and step out, they will kill us.
“Get me a hoverboard,” Anika calls out as we step down onto the level floor of the compound. It’s pitch-black inside the compound, the darkness masking all the features of the surrounding walls. The thick layers of smoke from the dozens of fires burning outside block out any sunlight from reaching into the compound, leaving us alone with the warm, stuffy air of the compound to fill our lungs.
I listen to Anika without a second thought, her mechanical fingers grabbing the hoverboard the moment it appears in front of me. I quickly realize that I was stupid for ever getting off my hoverboard in the first place, and with the force field knocking it down to the bottom of the pile of rubble, I simply slide my feet back into the straps.
In a split second I try to analyze my surroundings as best as possible. Behind us lies the massive hole in the roof and the ensuing pile of rubble that created a gateway into this building. Dozens of humanoids are already beginning to pile into the compound as rounds of missiles hit the exterior of the force field.
The chaos is already picking up again.
They have unlimited resources. Unlimited soldiers. Unlimited power. And every foot we grow closer to the core of this compound, I can’t help but feel the overwhelming presence of something greater looming.
And not great as in the sense of anything positive.
There is a deadly, malignant force that infests the hallways of this compound. A force that makes me question if it is even a good thing that my mom, Riva, and Ai may be alive in here.
I don’t even have to see the walls to know that they are stained in blood and the floor is cracked like the bones of the hundreds of people who have been rounded up here.
The pain and torture that has been endured here for years adds a heaviness to the air. So many dreams lost, lives torn apart, and trauma endured in the dark confines of this hellish place. Nothing I will ever do can take that pain away.
And there is a part of me, even as we approach within minutes of saving the people I love most in this world, that wishes there were another way. In fact, I refuse to believe that this is the way.
In the back of my mind, chipping away at the adrenaline and confidence keeping me going, is the crippling fear that the Syndicate is only leading me deeper into the very wasteland I will spend the rest of my days locked away in.
I fear that all the people I love truly are dead, and this is all nothing more than an elaborate trick to get me to bring the cube right into their hands. I know that at any moment Anika can be hacked again, and that at any moment the roof that is rumbling from the endless barrage of explosions could collapse onto the force field, trapping us deep within the earth.
But even with these fears I keep leaning forward, allowing the hoverboard to propel me closer and closer to the moment I never thought would happen.
It is too late to back out now.
It is too late to try and destroy this cube and get this problem out of the world for good.
My only option is to try and save the world or die with the one thing that can destroy it all in my hands. That sounds heroic. That sounds fucking epic. But I’m just a man who is scared, desperate, lonely, and with no other choice but to fight for what I believe in.
And it’s that fight that I keep on battling even when a surge of humanoids charges at us from our front side. The humanoids themselves are harmless. They can’t do anything to break through the force field. But when they collide with it, a shower of sparks lights up the darkness, only adding another wrench to the chaos that my mind has to process.
“We will be there in a minute, there is a staircase coming up,” Anika shouts above the sirens that only increase with volume as we descend further into Moosehorn. I keep my eyes focused on her silhouette in front of me, the rest of the compound nothing more than a layer of darkness in my vision. With her bionic powers, she can easily switch her contact lens to detect infrared rays and effectively navigate us through this m
ess.
For a second, it all even feels a bit too easy.
I mean, yes, practically every time I blink, half a dozen more explosions connect with the exterior of the force field, the insides of my body violently rattling with each one.
Then we finally make it to the room that is supposed to contain all the prisoners. At least, that’s what it says on the holographic map that Anika has been following the entire time.
At first, when we make the turn into the room, I see nothing out of the ordinary. And that is because for the thousands of feet of dark hallways we just hovered through, I saw nothing.
Then Anika’s torso shifts, a tiny compartment on her stomach opening up to reveal a floodlight.
The entire room is illuminated.
The sight takes away all the internal alarm bells screaming inside me, wondering why the ringing of the sirens has stopped along with the rapid advance of the humanoids in all directions.
In fact, things feel oddly peaceful for an invasion in one of the world’s most heavily guarded government facilities.
But any feelings of peace melt into terror as I take in the horrific massacre. I thought we would be walking into a room full of hundreds of zombified people who have had their brains torn out from years of experiments.
Instead, everyone is dead.
Thousands of bodies line the walls of the stadium-sized room, each of their limbs chained to the walls. Every head has been severed from the naked bodies, their colorless eyes and blood-stained hair lying on the floor to rot.
Scratch anything I said before about horrific sights.
This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed. The walls of the room itself are covered in blood, even the ceiling and the cement floor are covered in the guts and flesh of dead humans. From the stench that permeates my nostrils, I can tell that these aren’t humanoids or dummies made to look real for show.
All these people were killed.
They died only minutes ago.
“No!” I scream, flying forward toward a body that I think looks like my mother’s. When I approach within a few feet of its stabbed body, I realize that it’s not my mom at all, and before I can back away, the exterior of the force field zaps the dead corpse.
Blood and guts fly through the air as the chained body smashes into the wall. They will lie on the ground, their limbs drowning in blood and feces for eternity. Every ounce of their dignity stripped away from them as their flesh rots inside this dark, cold mass grave that houses the bodies of thousands of people.
These are all the subjects of the Maga X experiment.
Every single person a victim in the Syndicate’s cause to rule over the world. Soon, every person alive will be a victim. Soon, this entire world will be in their grasp. But for the moment, none of that matters.
When I stare at the bodies, my eyes filling up with tears and my body shaking from the shock, all I can think about is the warm smile of my mother and her crisp blue eyes.
She didn’t deserve this.
She didn’t deserve this pain.
She didn’t deserve to die like this.
Maybe it would have been better if she killed herself. Maybe it would have been better if she found a way to escape this hell before it swallowed her whole.
“Riva!” My voice echoes off the walls, the silence sending chills down my spine. “Riva!” I scream again, hoping that by some chance one of the people I love is still alive. I start hovering around the room, Anika following behind me, as I desperately search for Ai, Riva, my mom, or anyone who is alive and can be saved.
But every last person in here is dead.
Their bodies mutilated beyond recognition, all the color drained from their eyes and skin as the blood soaks into their bones.
The emotion of sadness hasn’t even hit me yet.
Even anger hasn’t taken over my being.
All I feel is shock.
A degree of shock so intense that my entire body feels as if it is vibrating, my lungs and heart about to explode as the pressure caves in.
Anika doesn’t need to say anything for me to know what this means.
My loved ones are dead.
Maga X is complete.
The Syndicate is one step away from making this world theirs forever, and we are the only living people left that can stop them.
“End this! End this” I cough, the tears now pouring down my face as the terror overwhelms me. Now I finally understand the dark energy that infested the air the second we stepped into the building. As we ventured deeper into the compound, the feeling only churned my stomach more, the cold air in this room seeming to whisper softly in my ear that I will end up just the same as the thousands of bodies chained to the bloody walls.
The Syndicate knew we were coming.
The government knew that we were going to shut Maga X down.
So they destroyed it for us.
I have no hope left.
“We need to go,” Anika says, visibly startled as she looks back at the narrow entrance that we entered into the stadium-sized room. Just from being in here for a few minutes I feel the hairs in my nostrils dying from the stench of feces and a stew of human organs and blood brewing on the floor.
“Just stop,” I snap. “There’s nothing we can do. Do you see what’s around us? They are five steps ahead of us. They fucking won!” My voice booms off the walls, the domed shape of the room amplifying my words. The silence that follows has a way of seeping into my bones and bringing all the sadness and anger to the surface of my pores.
The shock is starting to wear off, my mind finally settling into the fact that this is what I expected all along. I knew my family wouldn’t be alive. I knew this was all some fucked-up trap that the Syndicate planted so I could hand the cube over to them. That’s exactly what happened.
And although I never would have pictured a massacre of this epic of proportions, in my gut I knew that this story would have a bad ending.
Everything is silent because the Syndicate knows that they don’t need to shoot at our force field now. They don’t need to try and kill us with a bunch of missiles for us to know that they won.
There is no way out of this. They likely have this room surrounded in thousands of tons of bombs that will bury us in millions of pounds of debris for eternity.
They are just waiting to kill us.
“They haven’t won yet.” Her mechanical fingers wrap around my legs, forcing me forward on the hoverboard. She is headed out of this room, back out into the dark hallways of Moosehorn that are covered in the blood of the dead bodies.
“Where are you taking me?” I flail wildly in the air, doing my best to throw the mechanical fingers off me, but their grip around my ankles is deadly.
Anika has me in her grasp now.
After a few seconds of trying to break free, I give in to the pressure. There is no use in me getting out of this now. Breaking free from Anika will only ensure that the Syndicate finds another, even more gruesome way to kill me.
No matter what she says, I’ll never trust that the Syndicate hasn’t implanted a bug in the microchip in her brain, allowing them to dictate each one her actions.
“We are going to the room where the device is stored,” Anika says as she continues dragging me out of the room of death and out into the dark hallways. “Where the main experiments of Maga X took place.”
“And what do you wanna do now? Everyone is dead. What is even the point?”
“We are going to explode this entire place, including the cube. We are going to destroy everything and hope that by some chance the deadly technology that they created here is destroyed for good. We have to kill ourselves and hope that when we bring ourselves down, the Syndicate will fall right with us.”
Her words echo off the narrow, blood-covered walls of the hallway. Her floodlight is still turned on, illuminating the long, empty corridors that make up this compound. There aren’t any humanoids, no flashing alarm lights, and not any missiles being shot at us.
And the idea that the Syndicate and military mysteriously told their forces to retreat scares me more than if we had one million humanoids on our tail.
The only sound except for our breaths is the exhaust pumping out of the fuel tank at the bottom of the hoverboards. In a way, it already feels like we are dead.
It already feels like it’s over.
Now we just have to explode this place and ourselves one last time. I’ll never feel the pain again. But part of me knows that the horrid visions of the thousands of dead bodies chained to the walls and the stench of the blood coagulating into one death-filled mixture will never leave me.
I can’t escape this.
“We are here,” Anika says as we make one last turn, down an even darker hallway. Her mechanical fingers let go of their grip on my ankles, the chilling nature to the compound disappearing as my chest is filled with a painful uneasiness.
I narrow my eyes at the sight in front of me, my eyes at first not believing it to be real. Then the light from Anika’s floodlight is drowned out by dozens of industrial lights that automatically switch on.
They hang from the ceiling dozens of feet above us, their incandescence illuminating the hundreds of massive screens that hang on the walls. This room is even larger than the last. Each screen is turned off, tens of thousands of lights blinking on the terminals below it, each tower storing thousands of terabytes of data from the Maga X experiments.
The ceiling and floor are both lined in the same dull gray cement, this time their surface free from dried-up blood and guts. But it’s none of this that surprises me.
It’s the three people standing right in front of me.
It’s Riva, Ai, and my mom.
“Deconstruct force field.” I tap the Chimera Cube, my instinct to immediately run forward and hug my mom. She looks almost entirely different than I remember. All the color has been drained from her blonde hair, leaving thin, gray strands to lazily hang off her scalp. Her smooth, beautiful skin is now dry and cracked to match her parched lips and emaciated body.
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