by Drew Cordell
“My nightmares have become reality,” I said, leaning back in the chair and rubbing my face. “I’m scared I won’t be able to protect Mary. She’s the one I love the most, the most important person in my life, and all of my other friends are dead. I couldn’t save them, and I’m scared I won’t be able to save Mary, either.”
“You already saved her,” he said solemnly. “You’ll always watch out for her, and she’ll always watch out for you. That’s how love works.” Master Aarlen leaned forward and grabbed my hands. “No matter what happens, I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to meet you, Jake. It’s been an honor teaching you, and I want you to know how proud I am of what you’ve done and what you will do.”
“Thank you, Master Aarlen, for everything.”
I said my goodbyes, thanking him.
After meeting with Master Aarlen, I went to meet with Martinez to gear up for tomorrow’s trip. Mary had already gone while I was away, and we wanted to make sure we brought a lot of gear to Olympus in case we needed it. While Marwin thought we’d still have access to all the Inquisitor supplies, we wanted to go in fully geared in case it was a trap.
I punched the button on the lift and dropped to the lower level of the Guild Hall, walking over to talk with Martinez. All my gear was laid out on a metal table, ready for me. Fortunately Martinez had been able to fix my jacket—the older version of Guild leather that had once belonged to my father, and he installed a new wrist link and Nanotech modules. He’d given me another SK-9 dual receiver rifle, CZR-7, and had fixed my Hellfire Blade and filled it with gas.
“You think this will be good?” he asked, checking over the gear one final time.
“Perfect. Thanks, Martinez,” I said.
“Anytime. If things go well in Olympus, I’m going to become a civil engineer,” he said, flashing me a halfhearted grin.
“Hopefully I’ll be able to get you a jumpstart on your new career,” I said, packing the gear in my backpack. It was nice to have my jacket back and with Olympus aware of what had happened in the Mids and Slums, I’d be able to return to Olympus wearing the clothes I belonged in. I slung my rifle over my shoulder, attaching it to the magnet on the side of my backpack.
“Looking good. Now go kick some ass. I installed a new app pack in your wrist link and hardened those weapons, so they might still work if an EMP goes off. It’s clear the Omniscience Engine has gone out of its way to decentralize and create more autonomous robots, which is something none of us expected,” he said.
“Do you think the EMP will work if we can’t shut it down manually?” I asked, holstering my sword and CZR-7.
“We knew the HKs could operate offline, but we thought they were still actively searching for the Omniscience Engine’s frequency. It’s clear now we’ll have to blow the nuke at full spectrum to shut it all down. But like I said, it’s a contingency to the best option, which is you shutting down the Omniscience Engine manually.”
I finished packing up my gear, feeling the familiar weight of my kit. “Thanks for fixing this stuff up,” I said.
“Yeah, of course. I need to finish getting everything ready for tomorrow. We’re taking steps to ensure everything goes as planned. We’re going to get you to Olympus, and we’re going to make sure you get there safely.”
“How did Adrihel communicate with the Guild in the first place?” I asked.
Martinez set his datapad down. “Marwin’s contact, who has yet to be named, sent an autonomous drone containing the encrypted video files for us to decode with the same keys as the original transmission that gave us access to the data drives containing the Omniscience Engine’s code.”
I shrugged, trying to think of who the contact could be. The only person Marwin seemed close with in Olympus was Baroness Jexus Brae, but she hardly seemed to be on our side. In fact, I didn’t trust Jex at all, and I had always assumed she and Marwin were just friends, or maybe they had an on-off romantic relationship.
“Did you hear me?” Martinez asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Uh, no, sorry,” I said, returning my attention to Martinez.
“I said I don’t like that Marwin isn’t sharing who his contact is, even now. He should be able to trust every single person in our Guild with his life.”
“He hasn’t told me either,” I said.
“I know. I never even knew he was part of the Guild, let alone a Justicar, until you three showed up. I heard Caeldra almost killed him,” he said, laughing weakly before frowning. It seemed like he couldn’t quite believe she was gone either.
I smiled. “Yeah, he put on a good show when he captured Caeldra and me a few years back. We had no idea he was with us until he saved Mary and me from Infinitum.”
“Well, I’ll make sure you get to Olympus safely and that you’re prepared for anything that comes your way. If all goes as planned, we’ll be building a new society next week,” he said, clapping me on the back and heading out to work on some of his other projects.
I hadn’t found peace yet, but as soon as the Omniscience Engine was shut down for good, I would be able to rebuild my life with Mary and honor the lives of our deceased friends. Their deaths still weighed heavily on my heart, but I had clarity of thought—the resolve to complete my mission and destroy a society built on over one hundred years of lies and corruption. I had the opportunity to build a new world where liberty would triumph. In the pursuit of false perfection, the Omniscience Engine had almost driven humanity to extinction, and I planned to stop it.
28 OLYMPUS
Mary, Marwin and I trailed behind Shield Squad as we moved rapidly through the tunnels of the Undercity. We had our weapons raised, and Artemis hadn’t detected anything on our route. HKs were built with a stealth-like profile and were difficult to sense, but the EMP at the Docks had wiped out most of them before they could get into the Undercity.
There was no way to tell how long we’d be in Olympus. For all I knew, it could be years. I limited what I’d packed since almost anything I needed would be available to me in Olympus. I carried the strongbox from my father we’d recovered in the Undercity, remembering his instructions on when to open the first of the three envelopes it contained. I was supposed to open the first after a massive shift in political power in Olympus—which I hoped meant the permanent deactivation of the Omniscience Engine. I couldn’t help but wonder what the envelopes contained, but I intended to only open them when instructed. The robot had information that seemed impossible for it to know, and so far, it had helped the Guild tremendously in developing a working weapon that could destroy the Omniscience Engine—even though testing the weapon had almost cost us everything.
I pulled back to focus on my surroundings, paying attention as we moved. I had to stay alert; the Slums weren’t safe, and we were a high value target. My headset crackled in my ear as Command constantly scanned the surface of the Slums, searching for potential traps and waiting to pick up Adrihel’s ship signature. Adrihel had promised to broadcast the same encrypted signal that had been used by Marwin’s contact in Olympus to validate authenticity, at least to a certain degree. If Infinitum had been impersonating the contact, then there wouldn’t be much we could do, but like everyone said, this was our best chance at shutting down the Omniscience Engine for good.
“Three clicks out,” Eric Novak said from up front, his voice echoing through comms. “We’re still good on time.”
I had spoken to him a couple days ago about his brother, Darren, and it only seemed to faze him for a day before he returned to active duty leading his squad. Perhaps Eric had already come to terms with his brother’s death after hearing the news of the operation. Either way, I hadn’t expected him to be leading his squad any time soon, but here he was, as objective and professional as before.
“Shield Squad, we’re moving the rendezvous point; the new objective is coming to you now. The new position will offer safety against an explosion or attack while we scan the Dropship and confirm the identity of the passengers.”
“Understood, Command. Moving to the new location now,” Eric said.
We cleared the rest of the tunnels without spotting any HKs and came to an abandoned alleyway on the streets of the Slums. One of the soldiers in front lifted the grate off the ceiling and slid it away, climbing up the ladder and taking a defensive position on the street while the rest of us climbed up.
“One click from the rendezvous,” Eric said, pulling up his map on his wrist link and connecting to the signal infrastructure we had set up around this part of the Slums.
“Command, we’re on the streets. Can you still read us?” Eric asked.
“Copy. Comms are good, and we’re tracking your location on the surface. No disruptions in signal detected,” the voice replied.
We cleared the dirty alleyway onto a side street that looked like the rest of the Slums. Small streets like this had been an afterthought when the Slums were still alive, and streets like this were often cramped with shady people and semi-legitimate shops that hawked goods of questionable legality. When I lived in the Slums, I always avoided places like this. Now, there was nothing here, and it was impossible to feel anything other than a growing sense of hopelessness that anyone would ever live here again. Millions were dead, and that fact hadn’t sunken in until I felt the emptiness that replaced the once overcrowded districts of the Slums. Even now, three years after arriving back here, the weight of what happened still cut like steel.
We passed empty stalls and our feet crunched over the broken class of the small shops that were mashed together, all looted of anything of value. If it hadn’t been for the masks, the smell would have been terrible. Something had been getting into the garbage bags, chewing through the plastic to delve through the contents and hidden treasure underneath. It seemed, for the most part, this street was devoid of bodies, but we knew they were there, just hiding in the shadows beyond the reach of our flashlights.
A blip lit up on my wrist link, and everyone sunk down, searching for a position of cover as we searched for the radar signature. “Anyone have eyes?” Eric called.
“Negative,” Marwin called from in front of us.
One of the soldiers in the squad moved forward, throwing his long rifle behind his back and scrambling to climb a fire escape ladder that scaled the back of one of the residential buildings along the street. Our scanners updated, and the blip was gone. There was no indication that the thing—whatever it was—had existed at all.
“Do you have eyes on anything?” Eric asked George, the sniper, keeping his voice down.
The sniper who climbed to the rooftop moved his rifle along the edge of the roof, scanning with the high-powered night vision optics and searching for anything out of the ordinary.
“No sir, probably just a glitch in the system. The hardware has been acting up since the EMP, some sort of disturbance from some of the equipment that was out of the blast radius.”
I had come to learn glitches didn’t exist—there were no coincidences. Something had been there, and I hadn’t known the scanners Artemis relied on to be anything but reliable.
“Keep looking. It shows as an unknown on the system log, but I can’t get a read if it was organic or robotic,” Marwin said.
I pressed the screen on my wrist link, maximizing the map window and pressing the screen again to filter out friendly signals. The map was blank, but the animation showed it was updating constantly, using our combined scanning power and local infrastructure connections to scan our surroundings.
“Let’s roll out. Be ready to take a defensive position,” Eric said, leading forward. “George, stick to the rooftops and be prepared to provide sniper coverage.”
We followed Shield Squad, and I walked close to Mary, keeping my weapon ready and positioning my wrist so I could quickly glance down and see my map while I walked. I toggled my Artemis vision overlay to minimalist mode, only having it highlight my allies and any unknowns it picked up. I needed to trust my instincts and training. Feeding too much information from Artemis into my contact lenses was a good way to get distracted or miss something.
“Shield Squad, we’re picking up Adrihel’s Dropship. It just passed from the Mids to the Slums. They’re ahead of schedule, and we’re going to need to move the mission clock forward. Cancel the previous rendezvous point and proceed to the objective.”
“You heard him. Let’s move,” Marwin said.
Without the luxury of time, we moved forward faster, walking quickly toward the objective point. Something felt wrong, and it was gnawing at my stomach.
“The Dropship has landed and from our scans, it doesn’t look like there is any threat,” the voice from command said. “Shield Squad, get to the extraction point as fast as possible.”
We were still a quarter mile away from the extraction point and had to break into a run. The terrain on the side street wasn’t suitable for running, but we didn’t have the time to walk. Moving onto one of the main streets, we began jogging along one of the routes that had been cleared for Scavenger Guild transit, in open sight of the massive buildings that towered into the dark sky.
There was a faint rumble in the darkness ahead—the roar of a powerful engine. As we rounded the corner and turned onto another street, I could see the bright lights of a ship parked in the middle of the road. I couldn’t see the colors, but the ramp was deployed, and there were figures moving inside the lit cabin.
“We’re almost there. Still clear for delivery?” Eric asked.
“You are clear for delivery. Everything looks good,” the voice from Command said.
We ran to the ship, and Shield Squad took defensive positions as Marwin, Mary, and I approached the ramp. Colton Adrihel stepped down, wearing heavy armor and a helmet that looked similar to the ones used on Inquisitor armor. There was no doubt it was him. He held out his hand and waved us inside. There were a couple other people in the cabin, sitting in chairs and wearing the same type of armor.
“HKs!” someone in Shield Squad yelled.
Loud cracks rang out in the darkness, but there wasn’t any light from weapon fire. Sparks erupted from the torso of one of our soldiers and he was flung backward from the blast, panting on the ground and scrambling to gain his feet again.
“Get out of here. We’ll handle the HKs!” Eric roared, moving behind a car and firing into the darkness.
I watched as the flashlight beams of Shield Squad found moving targets in the night sky. Weapon fire erupted on both sides, and shots found their marks. Kinetic rounds from the HKs’ disruptor rifles were hitting Adrihel’s Dropship, but the shield systems were deflecting the blasts, holding up against the fire of the enemy assassins. Marwin was yelling something behind me, but I couldn’t make out his words. Something invisible punched him, sending him sailing through the air. He bounced off the edge of the ramp, rolling on the ground and trying to stand. Instinct kicked in, and I broke out of my paralysis.
Mary had already boarded the ship, and Adrihel was standing on the ramp, now holding a large weapon and firing a volley of green energy into the approaching swarm of assassin bots. Something had drawn them from the Undercity, or maybe they had been waiting for us to make a move the whole time. Lowering my rifle, I ran toward Marwin and helped him up. The blast had crumpled his armored vest in the center, and a thin stream of blood trailed from the crater in the armor he wore under his jacket. The Nanotech had probably saved his life, but after taking a hit like that, it probably wouldn’t again.
“Are you okay?” I yelled over the surrounding chaos, staying low as kinetic rounds whizzed overhead.
“I’m fine, let’s go. We need to get out of here!” he shouted, shouldering his rifle and firing into the swarming HKs as we boarded the Dropship.
When we were both inside, the pilot punched a button and the ramp retracted into the hull and the doors slid shut. Cracks rang out as the ship was hit by disruptor rifle rounds, but the shields were still holding up.
“We’re all on board; get us out of here,” Adrihel comm
anded.
The engines revved and the ship lifted, shooting us upward toward the ceiling of the Slums. I couldn’t see the firefight below us, and after passing through the threshold to the Mids, our radio contact with Shield Squad was cut off, drowning the shouting and screams with the thrum of the ship’s engines.
Colton twisted off his helmet, setting it down on one of the ship’s seats. He pulled on a headset and passed them out to the three of us while the other soldiers with him remained seated, resting their weapons on the floor of the cabin and sitting still while we climbed.
“It’s good to see you three again,” he said. “I’m sorry for everything. We’re going to shut it all down and rebuild from scratch. It’s hard to believe something like this could happen,” he said.
“Is Olympus compromised?” Marwin asked.
“It’s the same as when you left. We had no idea what had happened in the Mids—that everyone was dead until it was too late. We didn’t know anything until Bracken came forward. He risked his life to reveal the truth and because of him, we are able to bring you back to shut this thing down for good.”
“Bracken?” I blurted. “What does he have to do with any of this?”
“He was Marwin’s contact the night of Baron Telson’s commencement ceremony, the reason you weren’t arrested on the spot.”
I glared at Marwin. “You didn’t think to mention that?”
Marwin frowned. “I couldn’t compromise his identity. No one knew but me. No one needed to know, and the information was safer because of it.”
“Have you been able to get the people in the internment camps out of the Mids?” Mary asked.
Adrihel grimaced. “They’re all dead. When we arrived, there wasn’t anyone left to save. There weren’t any Enforcers at the camp, either.”
