Much as Orissa chewed on that question, she was unable to return an answer.
“Leon,” said Droll. “May I?”
He shrugged. “It appears this is a group think. Go for it.”
“We do not know what happened after the council vacated the facility. Indeed, the president insisted all persons present climb aboard Gemini enroute to an unknown location. But it is reasonable to suggest that an event occurred that fractured the council before boarding?”
“And those on board could have diverted to Florida at the last minute,” said Orissa. “Maybe the plane was damaged. They couldn’t make it all the way to the Atlas Mountains, so they settled for a facility closer by.”
Both had made good points, but neither had moved Leon from his entrenched position. “Someone had to have gone to the Atlas Mountains to set up the emergency broadcast.”
“Perhaps not,” said Clovis. “If there had already been a facility in the mountains, your council could have tapped into a broadcast system there remotely.”
Orissa popped a piece of eggplant into her mouth. “Clovis, do you still have the coordinates for the Florida facility?”
“Of course. A moment, please.” He drifted off toward the monitors.
Leon shook his head. “I don’t like this. We need to check the Atlas Mountains. Everything we’ve found so far points there.”
“Everything we’ve found until now,” Orissa said.
“I don’t like it,” he said again.
She glowered. “You don’t need to like it.”
“I don’t, and I’m going to suggest something you’re not going to like. We need to split up. You take Florida, I take the Atlas Mountains. We reconvene and share what we’ve found.”
Orissa blinked. “Is that a serious proposal?”
Leon shrugged. “Yes.”
She snorted, walking away. “I don’t even know what to say right now.” She wheeled back around. “In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a ship anymore. And I’m not swimming across the Atlantic Ocean.”
“The haais can provide you each with a Frigg,” said Clovis. “We have many, although they have not been in operation for several hundred years—since we obtained the mylosynicide warheads. Given brief maintenance, they should fly.”
“I hate this,” Leon said. “But it’s the right thing to do. One of us finds the true facility, and both of us come together in the end. Droll, you go with Orissa.”
Orissa thrust a finger in the air. “First of all, I can handle myself.”
Leon smirked. Always and forever defiant. “I know you can. But I have the medical chip, and I’m more experienced with a gun. You’re not a bad shot, but you’re also not a former major general.”
The wink he gave her didn’t come close to drawing a smile from her lips like he’d intended.
“This is completely insane,” said Orissa.
Droll approached her cautiously, as if she might swat him out of the air like a fly. “Actually, Doctor Servoni, I believe Major General Imus has presented us with the best plan available.”
She ran her teeth along her bottom lip. “The logistics—” She shook her head.
“We have our ships,” said Leon. “You heard Clovis.”
“What about communication?” she demanded. “How do you expect to keep in contact with one another?”
“Droll and I can communicate long distances via quantum entanglement,” Clovis explained.
“That’s great,” said Leon, “but you’re going to be here on this island. I’m going to be in the Atlas Mountains and they’re going to be in Florida.”
Clovis pitched sharply toward Leon, hovering mere inches before his face. “I will go with you, Major General. Although I cannot justify exposing every haais to retribution from the Machines, and thus ending all known life on this planet, I cannot sit idly by while you attempt to rebuild humanity and destroy the Machines.”
“If the Machines catch you…”
“They will not launch an attack on the haais based on a single drone, just as we have not launched our warheads due to a curious Prime or Duelist.”
Leon nodded. “I guess it’s settled then.”
He looked at Orissa. She gave him a shoulder and paced away.
He bowed his head. Closed his eyes—but not for too long. Couldn’t risk falling asleep, not after the dream he’d had a couple days ago. It was a bad one, much worse than the nightmare of him ordering an entire city bombed and leveled. This particular dream revealed a truth that he, quite frankly, couldn’t handle.
A truth about himself and the vile man he was.
Chapter Nineteen
They walked narrow hallways, led by a drone named Cassian who was taking them to the armory so they could restock and replenish.
Orissa had finally begrudgingly agreed that the Atlas Mountains could still hold something—maybe everything—of importance, and that Leon was, perhaps, right to search its catacombs while she scoured the facility in Florida.
Despite her understanding, a palpable tension had been strung up between them.
All the trust he and Orissa had established, the friendship they’d kindled, the possibly of something more existing between them—all of that had been shattered. She seemed cool, distant, and more a stranger than a friend.
Leon supposed his silence wasn’t helping matters, but what could he say? Every word that came to mind, every reassuring phrase seemed weak and limp.
He glanced at her, but her gaze was straight ahead. If she saw him, she didn’t reciprocate.
“We have arrived,” said Cassian, leading them into a hollowed-out cavern in the mountain. There was no door to unlock, only an archway to pass under.
A spiraling lamp hung from the ceiling, casting a damp glow throughout the room that sat empty except for the long, rectangular chests lining the walls.
Cassian explained that each chest held armor and weapons, and that Orissa and Leon could choose any that they desired.
Leon kicked open the chest closest to him. A stack of fat-barreled rifles stared up at him. “What kind of gun is this?” he asked, picking one up. He ejected a cartridge. Noticing it wasn’t a plasma cartridge, he checked to make sure the chamber was empty.
“That is a magnetic pulse rifle,” said Cassian. “It uses thermal-coated steel bullets with embedded magnets. Upon discharge, the bullet will seek out the nearest metal. Each magazine holds thirty whole bullets. Whole bullets are subdivided into forty smaller bullets when chambered.”
Leon inspected the gun. It had twin side sights, equipped with screens, that unfolded like wings at the press of a button. “Sounds like just the thing you want when fighting Machines.”
“Forty bullets from one bullet sounds like each shot fires a pellet’s worth of metal,” said Orissa.
“That is true,” said Cassian. “But when the bullet penetrates metal, the thermal coating superheats and creates a small explosion. The resulting impact is equal to three plasma bursts from a standard plasma rifle.”
“I’m sold,” said Leon. “But I’ve got a burning question. Why do you have all these weapons? I don’t mean any offense, but I doubt a drone could wield this rifle.”
Cassian banked toward the middle of the room. “These are relics,” he said, turning three hundred and sixty degrees and gesturing to the chests. “Prior to the haais’s acquisition of mylosynicide, we relied on virtual intelligence units to defend against prospective Machine intrusions. Once we acquired mylosynicide warheads, we dismantled these units but stockpiled their arms and armor.”
“Fortunate for us. So, where’s the ammo that goes with this bad boy?”
Cassian floated over to a chest against the center wall. “All ammunitions are stored here. The drone cycled over each chest, explaining the contents inside. Guns were limited to three: magnetic pulse rifles, laser-guided plasma submachine guns, and circuit interrupters useful for temporarily disabling Machines but only after penetrating their outer shell.
; Several options of armor were available for Leon and Orissa to equip, from full-body suits to individual pieces. Each was made of identical material, a mixture of titanium and chromium with synthetic fiber woven inside. When the fibers came into contact with plasma—the bullet of choice for Machines—they expanded, trapping the heat within. The fibers would fray and break with repeated impacts, however, so Cassian warned them to take as few shots as possible.
Sound advice, that.
In addition to armor and guns, Leon and Orissa had unfettered access to over a dozen grenades, two types of lock-on knives, and corrosion spray that worked like bear mace for Machines—apparently. Leon wasn’t eager to test it.
“Shall I remain here as your courtier?” asked Cassian.
“I think we’ve got a handle on it,” said Leon. “It’s a straight shot back.”
“Of course.” He spun around and fluttered off.
Leon watched the drone leave, thinking. Deliberating. In other words, he was torturing himself. His head blossomed with pain. It wasn’t a headache, or a migraine. It was something worse. A million thoughts racing through his mind, fears and trepidations abound.
His brain felt like a bottle of freezing water, expanding and expanding till it’d burst right out of his skull.
He had to relieve the pressure.
Leon turned to find Orissa rummaging through a chest. She picked up a grenade, turned it over. Unsatisfied, she swapped it for another.
“It could be worse,” he said. If there was ever a deserving time for a face palm, this was it. He had since they’d left the Seat of the Overseer to think about what he’d say to Orissa. And that was what he came up with? It could be worse?
Orissa had stopped perusing the grenades. Her back to him still, she said, “Tell me, Leon. How could it be worse?” She turned her head, chin on her shoulder. The green of her eyes was smoldering, shadowed by the swollen darkness under her lids.
“We could be dead,” he said, inconceivably choosing to stay on this topic instead of adjusting course.
“And that would be worse?”
He frowned. “You don’t mean that.”
Orissa let the chest slam shut. She stood, jaw clenched. “My mother, who I adore, was taken by the Machines. In less than an hour, I’ll be separated from the only person I’ve known since escaping the Machines’ thrall.” She strode ahead and kept coming until she laid a finger into Leon’s chest. “A person who, for all his shortcomings, still has an impossible way to make me… care about him.” Her voice cracked. “We don’t know if we’ll find anything to help us end the Machines. We don’t know if humanity still exists. We don’t know if we’ll see another sunrise. So don’t tell me things could be worse, Leon.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s not even what I meant to say.”
“Then say what you mean.”
“It’s not that easy, all right?”
Orissa shrugged her hands. “Why? It’s me and you. Alone. Under a mountain. I’ve told you my secrets.”
He cocked his head. “All of them?”
“Some of them.”
Leon started, then stopped. He paced to the wall, cursing under his breath. The words in his mind were clear. They formed perfect sentences that made sense. But when he tried to say them aloud, they were clouded with emotions, weighed with grief, and fraught with indecision.
“People,” he finally said, hands waving about as if he were trying to usher out the words from his brain, “are really bad, I think, at repeating the past.”
He looked to Orissa, desperate for an interjection. Hopeful she’d tell him never mind, he needn’t talk about it if he didn’t want.
But while she remained quiet, there was softness in her face. Empathy in her eyes. Had she not that compassion, Leon might have crushed his secrets and stowed them away in a deep, dark place where demons lie.
“I had a dream a couple nights ago,” he said. Shame made him look at everything in the room but Orissa. “I learned some uncomfortable truths from that dream, and also a reassuring one. So, let’s start with the latter, huh? I don’t care what your mother told you. I don’t care what you’ve seen in your dreams. In mine, you’re the reason we’re even here. You’re the reason humanity even stood a chance. And, I guess, in a roundabout way, you’re the reason I didn’t die with a bottle of liquor in my hand.
“As for the secrets I’m hesitant to share… well, I had a wife and daughter. And, er… hmm. This is tough.”
Orissa took his hand in hers. Her fingers were frigid, skin clammy, but her touch sparked a fire inside him. “Take your time.”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “I guess it’s best to tell you the dream as it unfolded.”
Although Leon only gave Orissa a synopsis of that nightmare, each word he spoke forced him to live through it again. He remembered it exactly, down to the finest details.
It was two nights ago. Sleep had hatched a new dream. A memory. Lucid though he was, and much as he wished for it to end as quickly as it began, Leon could do nothing but watch the past unfold while in the throes of sleep paralysis.
Spring crested over the mountains of Wyoming, spilling pink trails of sunlight across the morning sky. Leon sat on a rocking chair upon a vast veranda, overlooking a lake curtained in by cattails and swamp sunflowers and bearded irises rich with white blooms.
He held a cup in his hand, ice clanking against the glass as he took one last swig and emptied it. The rum burned his throat. But a couple more would numb him to that pain, as it numbed him to everything.
Leon leaned back and opened a cooler beside him. He scooped his cup through the ice, then grabbed the bottle of frozen rum and gave it a nice three-second pour.
“Mister Imus,” called a hoarse voice.
Leon let the cooler lid fall as he looked up. A man with a high-and-tight cut, silver threaded through his hair, stood at the edge of Leon’s gravel driveway. He was clean-shaven, jaw chiseled from the Wyoming mountains themselves and had a look that could chase away a rutting bull moose.
Rick Parlae.
“General Parlae,” said Leon, swirling the ice in his cup. “To what do I owe the pleasure… again?”
This was the general’s third visit in as many months. During the past two, he’d come done up in his uniform decorated with pins and stripes. Today, he wore jeans and a sweater, more resembling an old, retired man out for a stroll than a top commander of the United States Armed Forces.
“It’s strange,” said Rick, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “The first time I visited was around eight or so in the evening. You’d said Alyssa was out running errands and had taken Gwen with her. A month ago, I had come around noon. She and your daughter were out again. Errands, again. This time I pull up at eight in the morning and I see only your truck. Shame I keep missing them.”
Leon put the cup of rum to his lips and sucked a cube of ice out. He crunched on it, making a fist with his other hand. “Errands need run, General.”
Rick drew in a heavy breath and climbed onto the veranda. He smelled of birchwood and pine. He’d always slathered on the cologne.
Nodding to the cup in Leon’s hand, he asked, “How many is that?”
Leon snorted, rocking back. “Why the fuck do you care?”
If the general bristled at his outburst, Leon couldn’t tell. His mouth was a straight line, and he cast his eyes away from Leon, regarding his former captain with pity.
Leon didn’t need that. He didn’t need a general’s pity, didn’t need God’s pity.
“You know,” said Rick, “it surprises me you don’t have your rifle out here, ready to blast that drone out of the sky.”
Leon drank. “What drone?”
Rick pulled his hands from his pockets, crossing his arms over his chest. “You haven’t noticed one circling above the past three months?”
Nostrils flared, Leon grasped tighter to his cup. Had he the willpower to go inside and get another, he might have flung this one at the general.
“Thought it was a bird, did you?”
“Get the fuck off my property,” demanded Leon.
Rick didn’t move. “Some interesting things came from the footage of that drone. You’ve been making that chair your bed for the past week or so. You should get up more, Leon. You’ll get blood clots in your legs.”
“Is that why you came? Medical advice?”
Rick sniffed. “I couldn’t help but notice Alyssa’s car was only in the driveway twice in these three months. Both times, Gwen came running out while she stayed inside. The first visit, you picked your daughter up, spun her around, and then barfed everywhere. The second visit, you never got out of that goddamn chair.”
Leon’s eyes felt hot and prickled. He tasted salt on his tongue, and it wasn’t until he saw a tear fall in his lap that he realized he was crying. “You come here to break me, Rick? Is that it? Shit!” The cup fell from his hand, soaking his crotch with cold rum.
“I came here to recruit you, again.”
Leon attempted to pat dry his pants, but gave up after a few futile seconds. He went to scoop more ice into his cup, chuckling, tears still slipping from his eyes. “Third time’s not the charm, Rick. I’m not coming back. But I might get rich, huh? Take your ass to court for spying on me. I’m a private citizen! The justice system will look after me, right?” He grinned as he snatched the bottle of rum from its nest in the ice.
“Give it about half a year, Leon. There won’t be a justice system.”
Leon glanced up. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re a leader, Leon. Best one I’ve ever seen. Men would follow you into the pits of hell. They’d come fist-to-face with the devil himself if you told them to. That might be what it takes.”
Leon let the bottle of rum fall into the ice, his glass still empty. “Good pitch. Nuclear war brewing?”
General Parlae motioned to a chair beside Leon. “May I?” Leon nodded. Rick lowered himself into the seat with a groan. “Ten months ago, a team of SEALs went dark in southeast Australia.”
Rebirth (Archives of Humanity Book 1) Page 19