The Last War Box Set, Vol. 2 [Books 5-7]

by Schow, Ryan

  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 Four

  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 men 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 pointed 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 sadistic grin 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 Five<
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  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.

  “Gaslamp Quarter District, right?” the man says in a foreign accent.

  “You new to this city?”

  “Just transferred two weeks ago,” the man says. “Although I am new to San Diego, I can tell you the names of every single street in New York.”

  I smile, give him thoughtful eyes.

  “Have you been to San Diego before?” the cabbie asks.

  “When I was younger.”

  “Well the Gaslamp Quarter District is in the heart of San Diego, only a few blocks from the famed San Diego Convention Center.”

  “That’s where I’m headed after I check in.”

  He drops me off; I give him a big bill and tell him to keep the change. He seems to appreciate this. Then he’s gone. Speeding up the street, off to his next fare, his next single serving customer.

  The website says The Horton Grand is actually two hotels refurbished and brought together as one. What the site could not convey was how much character this place has. We’re talking gobs of it! The world outside the hotel is a bustling metropolis while the hotel itself might as well have been transported here from the roaring 20’s.

  Situated across a narrow street from Fluxx nightclub (San Diego’s Best Nightclub) and Puravida Yoga (30 days for $30), this quaint section of the world has a slight New Orleans feel that leaves me with the impression that I’m standing in a world of its own, a delightful microcosm where each day boasts more than a few different seasons.

  This will never be New Orleans, but it’s measurably better than San Francisco. As hard as I tried before coming here, I still couldn’t find a San Diego poop map, which told me it was okay to wear my good shoes. San Francisco, on the other hand, is so very much the opposite. Believe it or not, we have an actual “poop map.” As in human poop. Then again, anyone who knows anything about the city knows we have a homeless people problem. San Diego, it seems, is not beset with the same problems. Nevertheless, the way I’m feeling now, it’s obvious I’ve been stuck in San Francisco entirely too long. Honestly, as much as it sucks being away from Indigo, I’m starting to realize I desperately needed this change of scenery.

  Rather, my soul needed it.

  Instead of dropping my bags in the lobby and formally checking in after the conference tonight, the concierge shows me to my room without even the presumption of an early arrival charge.

  Check in for the event begins in the convention center at noon. I glance at my watch, realize I have just enough time to ch
ange clothes and head downstairs to Whiskey and Salt.

  Whiskey and Salt is the beyond-gorgeous restaurant that boasts a rather broad selection of more than five hundred different brands of whiskey, scotch and bourbon. I won’t say I threw back too many drinks, but I had more than one and less than three. Anyway, I catch a cab to the convention center because it’s too late to take the heel-toe express.

  The San Diego Convention Center is a line of massive glass and steel buildings, a gargantuan structure so long it feels like it could encompass half a dozen blocks in any other city. I wander around inside because I have time and a mild sense of adventure, but eventually I return to check-in, get my name tag and find a place amongst the dozens of available seats. The conference room is filled to half capacity, but there’s still time.

  I keep checking my watch thinking if this thing starts, I won’t have to meet anyone. I’m not the brightest social butterfly in the room. I’m not even close.

  Casually glancing around the room, I take in the occupants, spotting a few good looking women and some successful guys who look GQ “pretty.” It’s when an attractive young woman starts down my aisle and asks if the seat next to me is taken that I start feeling a bit uncomfortable. It’s not that I’m nervous around women, or even embarrassed by how shy or anti-social I force myself to be at times, it’s that she’s obviously not going to let me reside in my private little bubble.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hey,” I reply, non-committal.

  She smiles at me the way a woman smiles when she’s a bit surprised by how good looking you are but trying not to let on. I think I might have that same smile for her. She’s more fit than she is good looking, but her looks are definitely pleasing. I’m not interested, though. That’s what I tell myself. This keeps things from getting complicated. I still have a daughter. An ex-wife. A life to build before it’s too late.