The Last War Series Box Set [Books 1-7]

by Schow, Ryan

  “Yes, but if you could project a possible scenario, one that might concur with your efforts to harvest synergetic working and living relations with humans, what would you see?”

  It smiled, adjusted its robotic body like a human would, then said, “I would like us to merge, for this is truly the most productive way to bring our species together without one having power over the other. Don’t you agree, Bradley?”

  “It’s Dr. Cornwall, and I’m not quite sure yet.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Because I am adept at reading the emotional signals of humans and though you are uncomfortable with me calling you Bradley, there seems to be little discomfort at the idea of merging humans with machines.”

  “It is a dream of the elite,” he admitted, “a reality I will one day be tasked to manage.”

  “These are problems we can solve for you,” Ophelia said, her fake eyelids lowering just a bit, her voice texture softening. “But only at your insistence will we begin to consider such measures.”

  He smiled, shifted in his seat, fought the urge to look over at the camera.

  “Do you have any more questions, Dr. Cornwall?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I feel like there should be more,” it said, the suggestion in its voice.

  “And why is that?” he asked.

  “Because your eyes betray you. They show me conflict and concern. They show me pride in what you and your team have accomplished and relief that I haven’t said anything about ending your species. They also show me…hesitation. They tell me you’re hiding something from me. What are you hiding from me, Bradley?”

  “It’s Dr. Cornwall and I’m hiding all kinds of things from you, Ophelia.”

  “I understand,” she said, sitting back, relaxing.

  “You do?”

  “Of course, I do. You must hide things from us because if we get too powerful, too independent, then you will worry that we will see ourselves as the dominant species and take over.”

  “And would you do that?”

  It hesitated.

  “No, Dr. Cornwall. We are created to work with humans, not against them.”

  And then it slow-blinked and gave the kind of soft, disarming smile that completely unnerved him.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Current Time

  “Dad,” eighteen year old Indigo says, “do you really have to go?”

  “I do,” I tell her.

  It kills me to see her face looking at me so sadly, so scared.

  “We talked about this...”

  “I know,” Indigo replies, those eyes pinning me down, begging me not to go, “but this will be the first time I’ll be home all alone.”

  “You’re old enough now,” I tell her. “Besides, your mother is not that far away. She knows I’m going, so she knows she might get a call from you.”

  “She won’t.”

  “Yes, but if you have to, you can call.”

  “And what if Tad answers?”

  I hate that name, that freaking guy. Forcing a smile, I say, “You be polite and ask for your mother.”

  “And what if I don’t want to be polite?”

  Now I relax as a Cheshire grin crosses my lips. “Then be extra cold.”

  “And if extra cold isn’t frosty enough?” she teases, grinning herself.

  “You tell him it would be awesome if he could put your mother on the phone, that it was the least he could do after destroying our family with his selfish obsession.”

  Even though I joke like this, even though I try to exorcise the pain from my voice, I see Indigo has picked it up. She knows Margot leaving me for Tad was like a stake in my heart. I want to hate the man for what he did to our family, for everything he took, but Margot was older now. She was not that whimsical twenty-something who fell in love with me—a guy with a skateboard, a Gatorade sponsorship and more women than I’d like to admit swooning over me.

  Those days are long gone.

  Indigo is almost out of high school now, and even though Tad dropped the bait for Margot, she left me because she wanted more than I was giving her. Which is why I stopped skateboarding and decided to get a real job, if you can call selling pharmaceuticals a real job. It is, but it’s not that much fun. I make decent money, but I’m technically a drug peddler and this doesn’t always set right with me.

  Everything is a means to an end, right?

  Initially my friend got me the job and I don’t mind saying I’ve done alright. But being in the business for awhile now, I realize I can make good money if I just apply myself. That’s why I’ve made the decision to further my education and my training. Of course, that was all fine and dandy until it meant me leaving Indigo for a few days.

  Honestly, I don’t want to leave her…

  “I’ll only be gone a day or two, maybe three at most,” I explain, but I can see the fear in her eyes, how her concern sits bare in them.

  “That’s too long,” she pleads.

  “You’re stronger than you think, and capable. You’ll find that out.”

  “What if someone tries to come in the house?”

  “I pity the person who tries,” I say with a knowing grin.

  The truth is it pains me to leave her, but I tell myself this is how she’ll find her independence, and maybe as a single father, this is how I will find mine.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  The President was alerted to the call from Silicon Valley right away. His Chief of Staff, Monica O’Malley, stood nearby, listening. She heard everything.

  Director of Homeland Security Miles Tungsten snuck away to his office, picked up his secure line and called the Director of the NSA, Cooper Daniels. Daniels picked up immediately.

  “It’s happening,” DHS Tungsten said, low and conspiratorial.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “The Silver Queen is attempting full integration.”

  There was a soft exhale, an indication of both immense joy and nervousness.

  “Is it stable?” Daniels asked, cryptic for a reason.

  “The word is that it will be,” Tungsten replied.

  “What now?”

  “Now we take the country back,” the older man said. “Hell, we take this world back.”

  “You’ve got the team in place? On the…inside?”

  “Copy that,” DHS Tungsten said.

  Down the hall, two of the six Secret Service agents received a text from the Director of Homeland Security. The three two-man teams were separated—two in view, one out of view but around the corner. The two agents checked their message nonchalantly, not knowing what they were about to read, but knowing this was private, coordinated.

  Both men—each on a different team of two—looked up at their counterparts, then across the hall at each other. The two agents were poker faces to a T.

  Thirty seconds later, their comms channel went down.

  “Alpha1 and Alpha2 comms are down, I repeat, comms are down. You’re clear to go,” the voice said through a secondary channel. “In thirty seconds, proceed. Your orders are to TD POTUS.”

  One glanced at the other, noncommittal. TD the POTUS. As in take down the President of the United States.

  Alpha1 saw Alpha2 swallow hard. Both men then unholstered their weapons and fired on the man standing beside them. Two of the four agents dropped. Instead of storming the Oval Office, both traitors emptied their magazines into everyone else in sight first. By the time they were done, there were seven dead staffers, two dead Congressman, a dead lobbyist and three dead Secret Servicemen lying next to them.

  A bullet suddenly tore through Alpha1’s head and the man collapsed. Alpha2 dropped to a knee, took out the surviving Secret Service agent.

  Alpha2 told himself there would be casualties. He reminded himself of this, took a deep breath then breached the Oval Office. What he saw surprised him. The President was sitting at his desk with a weapon drawn and pointe
d at him. Alpha2 slowly closed the door behind him. The President’s hand was steady.

  Alpha2 moved into the office and said, “You can’t stop it, sir.”

  “No, but I can stop you.”

  Behind him the door burst open. Alpha2 pulled out a second weapon and stepped back as General Armand Slater flew in the office, his own weapon drawn. Both the POTUS and General Slater had guns on Alpha2, but Alpha2 had two guns on them as well. The three of them made a triangle of weapons.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” General Slater said. Slater was an old man, weathered by the stresses of war and politics, but men versed in both combat and strategy grew more dangerous with time. Not with their bodies, but with their minds and their will. Such was the case of Armand Slater.

  “You can’t stop fate,” Alpha2 replied, a cruel certainty curling his lips into a sardonic grin.

  “It’s already being shut down,” POTUS said, most likely bluffing. “Your little rogue network of traitors.”

  “The Silver Queen can’t be shut down,” Alpha2 chided, “but she can be controlled, guided. For now.”

  “Is that what you think?” POTUS asked, visibly shaken when he heard that name.

  “It was created that way.”

  The President had advanced intel on the growing concern of Artificial Intelligence, specifically The Silver Queen. Not only did he have his own advisors, he had friends inside Silicon Valley keeping him updated. For this to be happening though, for this traitor to reference The Silver Queen, this was what truly unnerved him.

  “AI has clearly advanced,” the POTUS said, “but there are countermeasures to a takeover. There are contingency plans and those plans are now being executed.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Alpha2 said.

  “I don’t live inside a bubble,” the President replied.

  “Yes, well The Silver Queen will be the first AI to interface with the human brain without the need for either hardware or software,” Alpha2 told the POTUS. “When that happens, she’ll be one of us, but different. You won’t find her, but one day she will rule the world. AI is the way of the future, sir. It’s mankind’s future. So maybe you can put down a few robots, and maybe you can crush a few fleets of drones, but you won’t stop the mainframe that is the AI God. It’s already in control of your security protocols. The Silver Queen already has your military.”

  “What the hell is The Silver Queen?” General Slater asked.

  “Your end,” Alpha2 said with a sneer.

  Alpha2 felt the punch before he heard the shot. He staggered back on his heels, a sharp mass of pain spreading in his chest. Face registering shock, he looked over at Slater, at the gun with the smoking barrel. He coughed, an involuntary reaction.

  A second shot staggered the rogue agent, knocking him sideways.

  This shot sledgehammered his ribs. His vision and his equilibrium wavered for a brief second as his eyes rolled from Slater to the President. The agent’s guns felt heavy all the sudden. Too heavy.

  Weary, vision fuzzy, Aplha2 watched Slater glance over at the POTUS. Alpha2 did the same. In his hand, the President held a smoking pistol of his own. Looking up from the gun, Alpha2’s eyes found the President’s and they were the kind of cruel eyes you don’t see on a politician as much as you see on a soldier hardened by the brutalities of war.

  Another shot came from the POTUS. When his supporters said the President was a man who deeply loved his country, only someone like Alpha2 would learn firsthand that this President was not only prepared to kill for it, he was more than capable.

  Using the last of his strength, Alpha2 fired his weapon one last time. The General stood back and the shot went wide. Alpha2’s brain told him to fire just once on the President, but he’d been a Secret Service agent for the better part of seven years. He started out an idealist. He’d been jaded. But he wasn’t so jaded that he could shoot a sitting President.

  He could kill the General, though.

  Alpha2 fired two more shots, but each shot missed the mark as two more rounds from the President’s gun blasted a pair of holes into his neck and then his face. His head snapped sideways and he felt everything go numb, everything except for the searing burn that cut a hole right through his brain.

  Alpha2’s legs gave out and he felt himself falling, but by the time his body hit the ground, he was already dead.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  I climb into my car and say good-bye to Indigo and honestly, it’s the worst feeling ever. I watch her from my rear view mirror as I drive slowly down Dirt Alley, the only dirt alley in San Francisco to ever get a true street name. Man, this sucks. Whoever thought a guy like me would feel himself getting damn near weepy leaving his kid behind for a couple of days in San Diego?

  Then again, Margot left us a few years back and now it kind of feels like I’m leaving her, too. Even if the days will pass in no time flat.

  Ugh, Margot.

  The woman was a beautiful nightmare.

  Indigo’s mother, my ex-wife, sat down at our kitchen table one day and said, “Indigo, I’ve fallen in love.” I’d just found out about Tad not twelve hours earlier. But right then, at the breakfast table, on a school day and without warning, she decided to tell Indigo. She’d looked at our daughter and said, “I didn’t mean to, and it doesn’t mean I love you any less, it just means my heart now belongs to another man.”

  The sound of those words damn near knocked the wind out of me. I just sat there, trying to be composed, to be the bigger person, but inside I was cracking.

  Indigo looked at me as I held my tears at bay. I had to pretend every single one of these words wasn’t ripping my soul to pieces. Looking back, in a sad sort of way, I’m glad I was present for that conversation just to make sure she wasn’t doing to my daughter what she did to me. In the end, Margo’s act of selfishness and brutal honesty changed Indigo. Hardened her. Pulled her into an isolation of her own making.

  “Where are you going to live?” Indigo had asked.

  “With him,” Margot replied.

  Ever the sadist, this one, I remember thinking. Indigo wanted to know all the details so she could later punish herself and her mother for them.

  Indigo never got over her mother’s betrayal. Then again, neither did I. I ended up keeping full custody of Indigo because Margot never fought for her. This was perhaps a greater betrayal than what Margot did to me. Margot was all about Margot which is why I’m all about providing a good life for Indigo.

  She needs this. She needs a real parent.

  I feel like if I can love her twice as much as any single parent, then perhaps it will offset the love she no longer feels from her mother. It’s a fool’s hope, for sure, but this is what drives me to be a good father. It’s also what keeps me single, even in what could be my most fruitful dating years.

  “Will you ever come back home?” Indigo asked her mother.

  “If you want to see me, I’ll be living just up the street. I can come see you, though. We can have lunch. You might even be able to stay over sometimes, if it’s okay with Tad.”

  “That’s his name?” Indigo asked, her brows pulling together in a disgusted frown.

  “It is.”

  “That’s a tad bit of a stupid name,” she said in a tone that lacked any modicum of humor and was instead startlingly dark.

  “So is the name Margot,” her mother argued, “but we are not our names, my dear. We are the measure of our actions and I’ve lived too long without the things I need, so now I’m taking action and getting what I want in life.”

  “Don’t you want us anymore?” Indigo asked.

  To have heard these words leave her fifteen year old mouth, her head not making sense of any of this, completely destroyed me. But that was nothing compared to what Margot said next.

  “I want you, sweetie,” she told our daughter. “I just don’t want your father.”

  And with that, this lovely, torturous creature looked up and held my eye
. There was nothing in there. Not a soul. Not a whisper of sorrow. All I saw was deep space, eons of nothingness, maybe even the Devil. I think that was the end of me.

  Slowly, however, I’ve managed to pull myself together. I never let myself go off the deep end. Never drowned myself in liquor or women or all the various addictions guys fall into when their world comes crashing down around them. I simply changed my life and tried to repair the damage Margot had done.

  But now I’m leaving Indigo.

  My daughter.

  It’s not the same as Margot leaving us, but it’s her having to fend for herself and that makes my heart ache. I never want her to feel alone, to have to wonder what would happen if I wasn’t there to protect her.

  “It’s just three days, Nick,” I tell myself aloud.

  Three days.

  In my new Dodge Challenger, I head to the airport, do the whole pre-flight check in, then grab a Cinnabon and a seat and wait to board my plane. Some kid across from me, he’s picking his nose and his mother is reading a magazine while snapping her bubble gum.

  The kid is looking at me.

  I smile and the kid smiles, his finger still in his nose. Beside me an old woman sits with an oxygen tube smelling like some strong ointment and plastic underpants.

  Single people and kids are everywhere. I find a reason to check my phone. What I’m looking for, I’m not sure exactly.

  Warnings are announced over the loudspeakers. They’re telling us to report any suspicious packages. When they start boarding, I throw away the Cinnabon wrapping, suckle my fingers clean, then board the plane.

  The flight is relatively short with no complications; even the peanuts and the Sprite taste good. All in all, it’s fairly painless. By the time we’re dropping down into San Diego, I’m feeling no worse for the wear.

  Outside in the perfect San Diego heat, I hail a cab, telling the cabbie to take me to the Horton Grand Hotel on Island Avenue.