Covenant

by James Maxey

  “She’s breathing on her own!” one of the App’s near Mrs. Knowbokov shouted.

  “She has a heartbeat!” the second cried out.

  Chimpion leapt up and grabbed the ceiling to avoid a spray of acid vomit, then dropped behind that App and thrust her sword behind her without even looking. As acid App fell, she charged forward and drove her shoulder into glue App’s torso with enough force to shatter his rib cage and drive the bone shards into his heart. As he fell away, eel App charged her, sparks leaping from his fingertips. Her wooden nunchakus bashed in his skull while insulating her from shock. Only three of the sixteen were left, by her count. Two stood next to Katrina Knowbokov. She threw knives at them. Both opened their mouths to cry out, “Ghost mode!” but her knife caught one in the throat before he finished the command.

  She heard a scrape above her. She looked up to find the App she’d lost track of clinging to the ceiling directly overhead. He let go of the ceiling and said, “Ghost mode!” as she jabbed her sonic sword into the light fixture he’d been covering. His ghostly form fell, so that her arm up to the elbow was buried in his chest.

  “Reset,” the falling ghost whispered.

  She screamed and stumbled backward, dragging the corpse of the solidified App with her. Her digital nerves had overrides to protect her from the pain, but nothing could save her from the wave of revulsion that ran through her as she realized that her right arm from the bicep down was molecularly woven into the body of the sacrificial App.

  Her disgust changed suddenly to confusion. She could no longer move her right foot. She looked down and found she’d stepped into a wad of glue that had been flung from the fingers of the glue mode App whose chest she’d caved in. She was trapped.

  She felt dizzy. The blending of her body with App’s was forcing human blood into her veins. Her body’s cellular defenses kicked in to fight the foreign cells. She shivered as her fever spiked. Her legs weakening, she sat down and used a knife to start sawing her arm off at the shoulder.

  At the last second, she remembered the final App. Under any other circumstance, he would have been no threat, no threat at all. Unfortunately, since she was feverish, mutilated, and half immobilized, the knife she threw at him went wide of its mark.

  App was standing a safe distance from her, holding the rifle of one of the guards she’d killed.

  “What?” she asked. “No acid mode? No eel mode? You’re just going to shoot me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, raising the gun. “I’m going to fucking shoot you.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Closer to the Ledge

  App was a child of California, a hardline lefty who couldn’t understand why any ordinary citizen would ever need to own a gun. He’d been forbidden to play with toy guns as a kid. He’d had to hide video games with guns from his mother. He’d never fired a real gun before, never even held one except for those he’d taken from suspects. All he knew about firing one was to point it and pull the trigger.

  He stared down the barrel of the assault rifle. Chimpion glared at him defiantly. If he let her live, she would find a way to kill him.

  He pulled the trigger, releasing a spray of bullets. The recoil pushed him back with far more force than he’d expected. He staggered, regaining his balance.

  Chimpion fell over. She’d already been covered in blood from her rampage through his clones. Had he even hit her? Was she faking? He stepped closer. She looked dead. He built up his courage and knelt at her side, feeling for a pulse.

  He felt nothing. She wasn’t breathing. He could see the trio of bullet wounds in the center of her chest.

  App dropped the rifle, feeling weary. Chimpion was a murderer. She’d killed his friends and colleagues. But he hadn’t acted in self-defense. He’d appointed himself executioner. He let out a long, slow, shuddering breath. This was going to take him a while to process.

  The streams of social media information that forever flowed through the background of his mind had gone silent. With the servers that normally communicated with his belt offline, at least no one had witnessed his kill. But he would remember it, right? It was part of him now, wasn’t it? Or, once the servers came back online, would he just be rebooted to forget all this?

  Assuming the servers would come back online. Had she really blown them up? In addition to his social media feeds being down, he couldn’t access any apps beyond the half dozen cached in his belt. Did that mean he could really die now? He felt a tension he hadn’t fully been aware of go slack throughout his body. It felt as if an invisible weight had been removed from his shoulders. His mind had squirmed away from any attempt to grapple with the ramifications of his potential immortality. Knowing that his current life might be his last made him feel as if it had some value.

  He shook off his reverie. He had work to do, starting with Mrs. Knowbokov. He ran to her side and again checked to see if she was breathing. Still alive. Peacefully asleep, actually. He guessed that Mrs. K had yanked out the poison dart before it could deliver a lethal dose. Or maybe Chimpion had only used a tranquilizer? Why drug her instead of killing her? App rubbed her cheeks, attempting to rouse her, but she didn’t move at all. His first aid skills were somewhat limited without being able to google answers on how to wake someone who’d been tranquilized.

  “We need a med team to the penthouse, fast,” he said.

  His request was met with only static in his head. Right. His coms had been routed through the server as well. He rose and picked up the phone on Mrs. Knowbokov’s desk. There was a row of buttons along the side marked Security, Jump Team, Finance, etc. He pressed the one for security. He waited for a moment as the phone kept ringing.

  Either he didn’t know how to use a phone or the whole security team was tied up. The timing of Chimpion’s attack couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to correspond with the techs in the jump room acting possessed. Whoever was behind all these dervish attacks had made their move. Why now? What was their goal?

  Whatever the situation, he wanted Skyrider and Servant by his side before he went back downstairs. He tried the line for the jump room. Again, no answer.

  He glanced back at his internal phone controls in his mind’s eye. He never actually needed to call anyone by dialing a number, so it took him a few seconds of fumbling through mental screens to find the numbers for Skyrider and Servant’s phones.

  He tried Skyrider first. It went to voicemail, then gave him the helpful message, “the mailbox is full.”

  He dialed Servant. It rang three times. He prepared for another voicemail.

  “H-hello?” Servant answered. At least, he thought it was Servant. His voice sounded weak, like he had a cold or something. Could Servant even catch a cold?

  “Servant!” said App. “Where are you? Our headquarters is under attack. Chimpion’s a traitor!”

  “I’m… captive…” said Servant. “Being… d-drained…”

  “Wait, someone captured you?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Why the hell did they let you keep your phone?”

  “It’s b-built… into… my costume… controlled… b-by voice.”

  “Who the hell could capture you?”

  “Sister Amy,” Servant gasped. “I’m… in… the t-temple.”

  “What temple?” App asked, wondering if this was some stupid joke. Servant being held captive was the most implausible thing he could imagine, and this was on a day when he’d personally been murdered by a chimpanzee over a dozen times.

  “New… Jerusalem,” Servant whispered. “Use… the s-space machine… to… free….”

  “That’s a swell idea, except the jump room has been taken over by dervishes. Why didn’t you call and tell us you needed help?”

  “P-passed… out. Your call… woke me.”

  “Right,” said App. “Hang tight, buddy. I’ll save you.”

  “Hurry,” said Servant. “They… plan to use… my energy… to move… to move…”

  “Servant?” asked App, as his teammate�
�s voice trailed off. “Servant?” No answer. “Fuck.” No scolding followed. Servant must have passed out again.

  As he hung up the phone, a loud rumble outside made him turn toward the window. The night sky was clear but the windows rattled like they’d been shaken by thunder. He moved to the window, looking out over the starlit ocean. A small dark form was moving fast over the water, raising a wake. His brow knitted as he studied the object. A missile?

  No. Skyrider, coming in fast. He blinked and she was no more the fifty yards away, pulling up into a sudden stop.

  “Ghost mode!” he shouted, just in time. The reason Skyrider had slowed was to allow the full force of the sonic boom to race in front of her to shatter the window. Instinctively, App curled up and covered his head with his hands, even though the shards of glass went right through his wraith form.

  He straightened up as Sarah floated into the room.

  “App!” she said. “My mother?”

  “Alive!” he said. “But she needs medical attention. Chimpion poisoned her.”

  Sarah looked around the room, which was littered with App’s corpses. “What the hell happened here?” she asked.

  “Chimpion killed me,” said App. “More than a few times. Then I shot her.”

  “You have a gun mode now?”

  “Just a gun.”

  Sarah pulled off her helmet. Her face was pale and the corners of her lips were crusted with blood. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “I was attacked by someone wearing a knock-off of Steam-Dragon’s battle suit. My mother’s not the only person in need of medical attention. I’m only still awake because of drugs. Lots and lots of drugs, actually. A gal could have quite a party with the first aid kit in my costume.”

  “Maybe you have something in your suit that can help her,” said App, switching back to his normal form and moving to Mrs. Knowbokov’s side. He knelt and checked her pulse once more as Sarah drifted over. “Though, I don’t know. She’s breathing okay. Pulse is steady. Maybe she’s just sedated?”

  “Chimpion might have wanted to keep her alive as a bargaining chip against me,” said Sarah. “Have you heard from Servant? He’s tied up in this whole mess. If he’s also turned traitor—”

  “He hasn’t,” said App. “I spoke to him. He’s literally tied up in this whole mess. They’ve taken him captive.”

  “How the hell do you hold Servant captive?”

  “He said something about an energy siphon, but he wasn’t super clear. He sounded pretty out of it.”

  “Get the jump team on the line,” said Sarah. “They can pluck Clint from wherever he’s being held—”

  “Can’t raise the jump team,” said App. “Or security. Just before I got into my fight with Chimpion, a second me had to deal with an incursion of dervishes in the jump room.”

  “Second you?”

  “I’ll fill you in later,” said App. “Right now, here’s the short version of everything I know. One, Chimpion destroyed the server that housed my backup. It’s cut off all but the powers I store locally in the belt. Also, if I die, I can’t be rebooted. Two, we have to assume that everything from this floor down is under the control of religious fanatics who work for Sister Amy. They have control of the jump room. Servant said they were planning to move New Jerusalem using the energy they were draining from him.”

  “Move it? Move it where?”

  “He didn’t say, but I assume—” his voice trailed off as light flooded the room. The cool night breeze of the ocean suddenly gave way to a blast of dry, scorching air, hot as a furnace that rushed through the shattered window.

  “Did this whole building just get jumped?” App asked, confused.

  “More than just the building,” said Skyrider, raising her hand to shield her eyes as she turned to the window and stared into the face of a blazing afternoon sun.

  Neither said a word as they moved closer to the ledge to look out on the landscape below. The tower now sat in the middle of a desert of fine white dust, surrounded by wooden buildings located around a central hub of an imposing, palace-like structure.

  “Is this New Jerusalem?” App asked. “Have we been taken to Texas?”

  “It would still be dark in Texas,” said Sarah.

  “Servant said they had him in a temple,” said App, taking a closer look at the big building in the center of the city. “That looks like a temple to me. But if we’re not in Texas, where are we?”

  “Israel,” said Skyrider. “She’s moved New Jerusalem to the site of the old one.” She spat a gob of blood out the window, then wiped her lips. “This is the last place on Earth I ever wanted to see again.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Let’s Go Save the World

  “You didn’t deserve to see Jerusalem again,” said a woman’s voice behind Skyrider and App. They spun around to find a tall woman in a flowing white dress who said, “Take comfort that your stay will be short.”

  The woman in white pushed her hands forward. App shouted, “Ghost mode!” Skyrider vanished.

  The woman frowned when she saw that App remained.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Why can’t the space machine move you?”

  “The space machine?” said App. “What the hell did you do to Skyrider?”

  “I had my team in the jump room cut and paste her into orbit. No doubt it will be a painful death but at least she’ll have a lovely view in her final seconds. But why are you still here?”

  App knew, but certainly wasn’t going to tell her. In ghost mode, his atoms were in a state of quantum uncertainty that made it impossible for the space machine to isolate him if he hadn’t initiated a jump before dematerializing.

  “No matter,” she said. “Whatever the genetic quirk that protects Skyrider and Servant from my telepathy, you plainly don’t have it. You’ll solidify and slit your wrists for me now.”

  “Why, exactly, would I do that?” he asked.

  Again she frowned. “Hmm. Your mind is too faint for me to latch onto in your phantom state. No matter. As long as you’re intangible, you’re helpless. The second you solidify, I’ll take control of your mind. I don’t believe I’ll have you kill yourself once you’re mine. With your powers, you’d make a formidable dervish.”

  “So you admit to being behind the dervishes, Sister Amy?” asked App.

  “You know who I am?” she asked.

  “Servant’s dropped your name more than once. I warned him about getting mixed up with a nut job like you.”

  Sister Amy smiled gently. “You should address me with more respect, brother. I’m the will of God given flesh. I command an army of angels. I can travel to any point in space with but a thought. The thoughts of the vast majority of mankind are open to me. Anyone I focus upon, present company accepted, dances like a puppet when I pull their strings. It’s unwise to show such contempt for the Lord’s chosen messenger.”

  “Wow,” said App. “I kind of meant it as a generic insult, but you really are nuts.”

  She stepped closer, her eyes locked with his. “If I am crazy, I’m on the verge of causing unspeakable harm to the world. The heroic thing to do would be to try to stop me.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But since boasted you can control my mind if I solidify, that would also be the stupid thing to do.”

  She shrugged and turned away. “I didn’t arrive at this moment by treating my time as a trivial asset. You may not be free to move about, but I have much to do. Blood must be spilled. There is a third of the world to sacrifice.”

  “A third of the world? What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t see why you need to know,” she said. She snapped her fingers. Two guards in fatigues and face masks with machine guns appeared beside her. “Gentlemen, the man before you is named App. He is currently intangible. He will have to speak in order to become solid again. When he does so, shoot him.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” the two guards said.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a firestorm to unleash.” Sh
e suddenly disappeared.

  “Hi,” said App to the two guards. “I don’t suppose either of you happens to be sane?”

  Neither responded.

  “You’re working for someone who is going to destroy the world.”

  “She’s going to cleanse it,” said the first guard.

  “She will fulfill the prophecy,” said the second guard.

  “Okay,” said App. “Crazy it is then. Guess I’ll just have to see if my reflexes are faster than yours.” He lowered himself in to a crouch, then sprang up, crying, “Target mode!” This was an utterly meaningless command for his belt.

  Both guards opened fire. The bullets passed straight through him. He’d fought a lot of people with automatic weapons in his short career as a superhero. Unless it was belt fed, a machine gun would empty its clip in about ten seconds. The guards both fired until their guns clicked, then reached for fresh clips.

  “Eel mode!” he shouted, dropping to the ground and leaping forward. The guards slid their clips in as he moved. They raised their guns, turning toward him. He reached out and grabbed the metal barrels. Both guns fired, burning his hands, but he held on despite feeling like his palms were being struck with hammers, pushing the barrels wide so the bullets flew past him. Both men shuddered and jerked as he hit them with all the current his cells could crank out. Finally, both guards dropped. “Ghost mode!” he called out, worried that Sister Amy might be watching her guard’s thoughts and might try to take control of him.

  Maybe she did try. How would he know? He certainly felt as if his thoughts remained his own. Presumably, if she’d known her guards were down, she could have used the space machine to send in more guards. Since no fresh guards appeared, maybe he was in the clear. Sister Amy was getting ready for the end of the world. Despite her powers, she was only human. No doubt she had a lot of things on her mind. With any luck, he wasn’t at the top of her to-do list.