Pandemonium

by Christian Kallias

  Pandemonium

  Rewind 717 - Episode 2

  Christian Kallias

  Contents

  Also by Christian Kallias

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  1. Mission completion time: T minus 575 minutes

  2. Mission completion time: T minus 526 minutes

  3. Mission completion time: T minus 487 minutes

  4. Mission completion time: T minus 421 minutes

  5. Mission completion time: T minus 339 minutes

  6. Mission completion time: T minus 202 minutes

  7. Mission completion time: T minus 182 minutes

  8. Mission completion time: T minus 141 minutes

  Sneak peek of the final episode

  Want to read another Cole Seeker story right now?

  Thanks to all my patrons

  Also by Christian Kallias

  About the Author

  Also by Christian Kallias

  The Universe in Flames Series

  Book 1: Earth - Last Sanctuary (Definitive Edition)

  Book 1.5: Ryonna's Wrath (Novella)

  Book 2: Fury to the Stars

  Book 3: Destination Oblivion

  Book 4: The Beginning of the End

  Book 5: Rise of the Ultra Fury

  Book 6: Shadows of Olympus

  Book 7: Armageddon Unleashed

  Book 8: Twilight of the Gods

  Book 9: Requiem of Souls

  Book 10: To End All Wars (Conclusion of Fury Arc)

  Books 1-5 available on Audiobook.

  Universe In Flames - Origins

  Episode 1: Course Correction

  Episode 2: Damocles Fall (Definitive Edition)

  Universe In Flames - Dark Legacy Series

  Book 1: NEMESIS

  Book 2: Unleashed (fall 2019)

  Far Beyond Series

  Book 0: Across the Galactic Pond

  Book 1: Fire at Will

  Book 2: Make it So!

  Book 3: Battlestations!

  Rewind 717 Series

  Episode 1: Freedom’s End

  Episode 2: Pandemonium

  Episode 3: Nightfall

  Acknowledgments

  Cover artwork by Christian Kallias,

  christian@kallias.com

  www.christiankallias.com

  www.facebook.com/ChristianKallias

  www.twitter.com/kalliasx

  Production Editor & Alpha/ARC Team Lead

  Paula Lavattiata Lopez- myeditcheck.com

  Editors

  Paula Lavattiata Lopez - myeditcheck.com

  Philip Newey

  Proofreaders

  Paula Lavattiata Lopez

  Philip Newey

  ARC Team (thanks everyone!)

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Christian Kallias christiankallias.com/art (Futuristic city on cover by Tom Edwards / tomedwardsdesign.com)

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  First Printing of original book(s), 2016

  Version 1.5

  One

  Mission completion time: T minus 575 minutes

  I go into the vehicle room on the fifty-seventh floor of the building. There are many options here. Flying car, chopper, a small range fighter, but more often than not, I go with my trusty jet bike. It’s fast, highly maneuverable, and has enough space to accommodate an additional passenger. Which hopefully will be needed later today. It’s also armed to the teeth with high-intensity lasers beams and plasma cannons, concussion missiles, the works. I load extra gear onto the jet bike in multiple compartments, more grenades, and additional spare weapons.

  Once I’m installed on the jet bike, I select a track to listen to on the way. I’ll have time for a single song. I feel the need to listen to some music even if just for a minute or two. I scroll through my library’s metal section and choose a Sentenced song: Vengeance is Mine.

  The bass line of the song starts blasting inside my head as I open the flight-level garage door. It splits open from the middle to display god-rays struggling to shine through green-tainted smog. It’s raining outside New Geneva’s dome, and each droplet that impacts on its force shield briefly illuminates it bright green.

  It’s an incredible sight. Millions of droplets generate expanding green light like ripples in a pond colliding with one another, sending lifelike green caustics onto the entire city below. I check the weather forecast; it will stop raining in a four minutes and twenty seconds. Somehow I’m happy I caught it before it does stop. I love the mood it gives the city.

  Before we can visit my old—friend, we stop at a predetermined target location. It’s the place where one of the terrorists involved in today’s attack lives. It’s his last known location according to the intel we’ve gathered. This person of interest is a direct connection to Ahmed, as in one of his lieutenants, Samir Faysal.

  Taking him out of the equation early in the day should slow down Ahmed's plans. But before I rip his heart out, I have a few questions to ask. We land on the roof of the building where his apartment is located.

  After rapidly dropping ten flights of stairs, I approach the target’s flat with caution. I use my vision augmentations to scan the place. Infrared, X-ray, subsonic resonance, light field, electromagnetic fields, local and external CCTV feeds, the works. Basically, all the data that can provide me with tactical vision through solid walls.

  It’s almost like seeing through them in fact. The overlay of all that real-time data gives me a clear picture, especially when displayed over the building schematics. Tanya superimposes it onto my vision in wireframe as to not overload and disorient my brain with too many visual stimuli.

  There are two people in the flat. That’s already one more than I expected. They are sitting in the living room. I grab both my blasters and set them on maximum stun.

  I guess it’s two for the price of one.

  I kick the door and shoot the first target before he realizes what’s happening, but when I shoot the second one, a personal shield around him stops the blast. He gets up, but he is still not facing me. When he finally turns around, I can’t believe my eyes.

  Ahmed!

  I instinctively unleash a flurry of shots straight at his head, but his shield absorbs them all. He looks at me and smiles.

  I feel my blood reach a boiling point inside my veins. I quickly switch both my weapons to kill mode with a single thought and keep firing. He rolls to the side and takes cover behind the sofa. I grab a sonic grenade off my belt and throw it his way. He lurches out of cover and throws it back at me.

  I jump out of the way, but it’s too late; the grenade detonates before I have time to get clear of its blast radius. When it explodes, I’m thrown back against the wall, cracking it upon impact. My ears are ringing, my head buzzing, and I am completely disoriented.

  I hear a rolling sound approaching me amidst the chaos happening in my mind and body, and when I look down at my feet, I see two metallic spheres rolling on the floor, one on either side of me. Before I can kick the first one away, they fly upward at shoulder level, and electrical arcs shoot from them and hit me in the chest.

  My muscles contract as intense pain travels up and down my body. I am, for all intents and purposes, unable to move as an intense electric current runs through me. My neural HUD is affected, and I see an overlay of static and noisy artifacts adding to the blu
rriness my vision already suffers from the overload.

  Tanya! Anything you can do?

  She must be affected as well because I can’t sense her in my thoughts. I’m on my own now.

  The amount of electricity traveling through my body seems to lower somewhat. I still can’t move, but the pain decreases. I wonder why.

  “You and I go back a long way, Agent Seeker,” says Ahmed Al’Hasi. “Somehow, you’re never far. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were time traveling. But there isn’t such a thing, now is there?”

  He must be fecking with me. In our last encounter—granted it might only have been a nightmare—he seemed fully aware of that fact. I still have to fight through some pain in order to speak.

  “Was there a fecking question in there? What do you want from me?”

  He bursts into laughter. “What do I want from you? Are you for real, Agent Seeker? You’re the one that’s always after me. Every time I have a plan in place, every time I’m about to strike somewhere, you’re there. Like a cockroach infestation I can’t get rid of. It’s been fun playing cat and mouse with you these past couple of years, but I’ve grown tired of it.”

  “Boo-hoo.”

  “At least you’ve become somewhat predictable. Knowing you would show up allowed me to put additional layers of security, or fail-safes if you wish, in my plans. I guess I should be thankful. Unwillingly you’ve actually made me a better servant of Allah.”

  “I’m so tired of looking at your ugly mug— in fact I look forward to ripping your smile off your face—in a minute. But why wait, tell you what? Disable your gizmos, and I promise I’ll make both our lives a lot simpler.”

  “I have no doubt you’d try. On the other hand, it seems to me you’re in deep trouble this time. These gizmos, as you say, have been custom made just for you. They’re one of a kind. Nice little prototypes, aren’t they? With a single thought, I can modulate the amount of electricity and even deliver a fatal jolt.”

  Damn! I fecked up.

  I went in with guns blazing, not taking time to analyze the situation fully before taking action. I could have sent a stealth drone to provide me with real-time video of the apartment from the outside. I would have seen Ahmed and not rushed in like a debutant foot soldier on his first day on the battlefield, looking for glory but getting death as the fair outcome for such utter stupidity. I stepped unprepared into what could very well become my grave.

  How can I have been so stupid?

  I don’t know if the electric current traveling through my body is weakening or if I’m building a resistance to it. I keep grimacing so he doesn’t know that I feel less pain. Somehow, I manage to transfer most of my power to two systems. First, I need Tanya back, in any capacity, and the rest I divert to my super strength. I need to get out of this mess

  Failure is not an option.

  Tanya speaks inside my head, but it’s all garbled. I catch enough words to make sense what she’s trying to tell me.

  Cole . . . we’re . . . trouble. Got . . . destroy . . . spheres.

  Yeah, thanks, I figured that one out already. If I can destroy one or even both spheres, perhaps I can end this day early; that would be something. But right now I’ll settle for not dying in such a stupid way. I need a distraction and fast.

  Tanya, try to have one of the drones shoot inside the apartment, preferably without vaporizing both of us in the process. If you’d be so kind.

  Unders . . . bzz.

  I’ll take that as a yes.

  Ahmed is enjoying himself. I can tell.

  “Any last words, Agent Seeker? As much as I’d love to stay and enjoy this moment, as I’m sure you’re aware, I have a busy day ahead of me.”

  I shoot him as deadly a look as I can muster through the pain, some of it simulated, buying the precious seconds we direly need until the drone can spring to action.

  “You’re a coward, Ahmed. You and your army of mindless fanatics.”

  The pain increases.

  Great! I’ve made him angry. Way to go, Cole.

  “You’re only proving my point,” I say, my voice trembling, feeling sparks of electricity between my teeth as I speak.

  “Listen, Agent Seeker, and listen well since these will be the last words you’ll ever hear: I’m not the enemy, and somewhere deep down inside that tough exterior of yours, you know this to be true.”

  “Fat chance!”

  “The corporations have enslaved the human race. They’ve turned us into nothing more than mindless drones at their mercy. We live and die by their rules. We either conform and accept the prison that our existences have become, or we die. A death that they’re all too happy to provide when we’re no longer necessary to their purposes. It’s not what I call an acceptable definition of life. It shouldn’t be for you either . . . nor anyone else for that matter.”

  Answering him is increasingly more difficult to do.

  “And—and that gives you the right to blow up innocent people by the thousands? Is that it?”

  “Nobody is innocent,” he says coldly.

  I don’t know if I’m hallucinating from the jolts overloading my nervous system or what, but I hear a countdown in my head.

  Cole . . . 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .

  “Hey, asshole! It’s been fun, and we should do this again sometimes, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather die than listen to any more of your blabbering nonsense. So here are my last words to you: FECK YOU!”

  At that exact moment, the reinforced Plexiglas window on the other side of the living room explodes when multiple shots of plasma fire scream inside the apartment. Resulting flames travel like a rabid wolf looking for a kill all around us. Red-hot shards and amber are sent flying around. Ahmed covers his face with his arms.

  It’s now or never.

  I divert all power to one arm and manage to grab one of the spheres. I apply as much crushing force as I possibly can. At first, nothing happens, which quickly elevates my stress levels. Then I feel something happening inside my right arm, providing some added strength. I don’t really know how Tanya does it, but she manages to give me that little extra jolt of power that is the difference between life and death right now.

  The spherical device cracks, and almost instantly the arc of electricity jolting toward me is interrupted. Sparks flow out of the sphere as it is now smashed as easily as a soda can in my hand. Ahmed recovers from the surprise of the explosion and turns his attention back to me.

  I don’t waste a millisecond. I throw my arm as fast as I can toward the remaining sphere and punch it dead center. The velocity and power of that punch sends it flying to the far left side of the living room where it rebounds against the wall. The second arc of electricity still partially paralyzing me is cut off. I bring both my repulsors to life. One blast of carefully aimed plasma obliterates the second sphere, while the second shot is aimed at Ahmed’s torso. He tries to dodge, but it still hits his shoulder. His shielding takes the brunt of the blast but the point-blank range forces him to lose balance and spin in the air before crashing into a glass coffee table nearby.

  It feels like I’ve just come back to life.

  My neural implants are slowly rebooting, and I get a dozens of warnings and damage reports. I don’t give a shit and ignore them. I’m still standing. I can move. That’s all that matters.

  I launch myself at Ahmed before he has time to get back up, but he’s already pointing his own repulsors at me. A shockwave hits me and sends me crashing back to the wall. I hear multiple cracks indicating some bones might have been broken, quickly followed by acute pain.

  I broke my ribs—again. He goes for another shot, but I jump out of the way in time. His second shockwave blast, a more powerful one, blows more than half of the wall off, revealing the corridors outside the apartment and carving a big cobweb-like crack into the next wall in the hall.

  That was close, says Tanya, her vocal sub-routine back to full form.

  I don’t have time to chitchat, bu
t I must admit I’m glad to hear her voice clearly again. I mentally take control of the drone and have it lock onto Ahmed’s heat signature. I shoot one of my grappling hooks into the thigh of Ahmed’s unconscious lieutenant. I need to interrogate the sucker, and since I don’t plan to let Ahmed survive my next move, I’m at least hoping this asshole survives what comes next.

  I run like the wind, only slightly slowed down by the sliding body in tow. I know this next part won’t be fun for any of us if I stick around for much longer.

  I jump atop the sofa and propel myself toward the ceiling where I grab the fancy chandelier. Three laser blasts explode nearby, scorching the ceiling. The chandelier rips from the cheap plaster material before I’m done swirling, and I land on the sturdy oak dining table. It quickly splinters around me as Ahmed unleashes a barrage of laser fire in a panicked attempt to bring me down.

  I hear the attached body tumble like a piece of dead wood in my wake. Hopefully, he won’t end up with more holes than Swiss cheese by the time we’re out of Ahmed’s firing range. Not much I can do about it though.

  That’s right, sucker, you should have killed me while you had the chance; now, instead, say hello to your creator.

  I jerk my arm as much as I can to give Ahmed’s lieutenant enough velocity to follow me as I jump through the large hole the drone created earlier and let gravity do the rest. The moment I feel its grasp on me, while still hearing blaster fire hiss past my ears, I command the drone to fire its entire ordnance of missiles into the apartment. I swivel around in mid-air to catch a glimpse of the show. One explosion after another, it looks like a Fourth of July fireworks display.