by S. Harrison
I look over at the other shape in the distance, drifting around the core. Even from here I can see the grotesquely thin, twisted limbs on the crooked torso of the dark, crumpled figure. “Onix is broken, Mother. When Bit hacked into the mainframe, she almost destroyed him.”
“Save . . . Onix,” she whispers and then closes her eyes.
“Mother!” I yell out as I shake her by the shoulders, but she doesn’t respond. “Wake up!”
I quickly blink over to Nanny Theresa again. “Something’s wrong with Mother.”
“There’s no one Sable hates more than Genevieve,” says Nanny Theresa. “Your mother is probably enduring hell inside of her mind as we speak.”
“Then I have to do something. I have to get all of us out of here somehow.”
“Now that the mainframe is fully operational, your mother and I could easily transmit ourselves away from the facility, and you and Bettina could reenter your bodies. But Sable is too powerful, and she’ll never let any of us go,” says Nanny Theresa. “There is no way out. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, child.”
If Nanny Theresa is right and there really is no way out of here, maybe I do just need to accept it. I look up at Bit. She always had her nose pointed at a computer slate. Computers were her life, and now she seems to truly be a part of what she loves the most. She and I could travel through the Hypernet into any computer system in the world. I look over to my mother. Sable said that she loves me. I’m sure I could eventually convince her to stop hurting my mother, and in time I could learn to live here, I suppose.
“Maybe . . . it’s for the best,” I whisper solemnly.
Nanny Theresa glowers angrily at me. “How can you say that!” she barks.
I shrug my shoulders in defeat and stare sadly into space. “I mean, I don’t want to die, and of course I don’t want Bit to die, either, but maybe it’s a small price to pay if everyone else in the world gets to live forever. I can heal myself with my thoughts, I’ve never been sick even once in my life, and I’m stronger and faster than almost anyone I know. And Bit, she’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. If Project Infinity is going to make everyone able to do what we can do, isn’t that a good thing?”
“You poor, deluded child,” growls Nanny Theresa. “Do you really think your mother and I would be trying so hard to stop Project Infinity if it was good?”
“But, when we were in Dome Two, you said you were trying to stop a pandemic,” I say, frowning at her. “I thought you were trying to stop it because my father was going to release a disease on the world. Project Infinity is going to give everyone amazing abilities, you said it yourself.”
“You really don’t understand, do you?” mutters Nanny Theresa.
“Clearly not!” I shout. “Everyone has been telling me so many different things, I don’t know what to think!”
“Sable showed you how you were created, did she not?” Nanny Theresa asks calmly.
“What?” I say as I try to quell my frustration. “Yeah . . . she did.”
“And what did you see?”
“Um . . . my mother was pregnant with me, and . . . Sable attacked her with the quantum grains.”
“That’s right. And during that attack the grains were infused into Genevieve’s cells at a molecular level. A massive dose all at once like that would have killed her in just a few minutes if Richard hadn’t quickly fine-tuned the quantum field and kept her inside it. She was barely two months pregnant at the time, and your young, developing cells adapted to the grains, but too much damage was already done to Genevieve’s body, and there was no possibility that she was ever going to survive. The only way to create another child like you is to do what was done to your mother. Very young fetal stem cells can adapt to the grains to create a child like you, but anyone older than that cannot be converted and has less than a two percent chance of surviving the quantum sickness caused by the grains.”
“Oh . . . my god,” I say as the realization begins to dawn on me.
“I’ve seen Richard’s estimates,” says Nanny Theresa. “There are forty-two million women in the world who are at a suitable stage in their pregnancies for their babies to be viable for the conversion. When the dormant quantum grains are activated in their bodies, many of those women will not survive to full term, but the ones that do will give birth to children who are just like you. Ninety-eight percent of the mothers of those children will die, just like Genevieve did, along with almost every other man, woman and child . . . in the entire world.”
I try to wrap my head around the mind-blowingly horrific and catastrophic implications of what Nanny Theresa is telling me. And it’s the first time in my life that I wish I weren’t so good at math.
“In approximately eight months from now, more than ninety-eight percent of the population of the world will be dead,” Nanny Theresa says grimly. “The entire human race reduced from nine-point-five billion people to a mere one hundred and ninety million, forty million of whom will be like you and Bettina. The world will become a postapocalyptic wasteland, and from the ashes of the old civilization will rise Richard’s new race of immortal abominations.”
I’m in such a state of shock I don’t even flinch at Nanny Theresa using that hateful word. “Nine billion people are going to die. This can’t be happening,” I say, staring out into nowhere.
“After those satellites launch and position themselves in orbit, it will begin to happen,” says Nanny Theresa. “Richard has measures in place to collect and raise the children himself. Those ridiculous silver Drones of his are probably already programmed to change diapers.”
“No, I can’t believe he’d do this,” I whisper. “He’s completely insane.”
“Yes, he is,” says Nanny Theresa. “Some lucky people will die almost instantly when the quantum grains are activated. Graham’s experiments on human subjects showed that they can trigger a fatal allergic reaction in a small percentage of the population. It’s a horrible, violent death, but probably a better way to go than watching your friends and family wither away around you from the months of sickness.”
“The underground lab,” I whisper solemnly.
“Yes. That’s where Graham conducted his experiments,” says Nanny Theresa. “Richard no doubt promised Graham the same thing that he promised all his wealthiest and most powerful friends. That he would either spare them or transfer their minds into one of the new babies.”
“He can do that?” I ask.
“No, the neural-interface technology is years away from being capable of such a thing.”
This is all too much to take.
“You should have killed me,” I say to Nanny Theresa. “If you had told me all of this, I would have let you do it. I would have done it myself.”
“You know it wouldn’t have made any difference. Bettina would still be up there, and we would probably still be down here,” says Nanny Theresa. “There’s nothing any of us can do now.”
“I have to do something!” I yell.
I look up at Bit, and in a blink I’m floating in front of her. “Bettina!” I scream, and her pitch-black eyes flick open.
“Finn,” she says in her creepy half-robotic voice. “Are you ready to see?”
“Bit, my father is going to kill everyone on the planet. You have to help me stop him.”
Bit smiles. “I’m looking down on the earth from the International Space Station, Finn. I’m watching a wedding in India. I’m—”
“Everyone is going to die!” I yell at her.
“Come and see, Finn,” she says as she slowly holds out her hand.
This is pointless. She can hear me, but she’s not listening; she’s lost in a billion virtual worlds streaming in from every camera and phone on and above the planet.
I blink back down to Nanny Theresa.
“How do I access the walkie-talkies?” I ask, glancing at her.
“It won’t do any good to—”
“How! Just tell me!” I yell. Nanny Theresa frowns at m
y outburst, but she obliges me.
“The red strips, running around the side of the sphere. Do you see them?” she asks.
I look at the wall in the distance and see that there are thousands of different-colored strips making up the wall of the sphere. And hundreds of them are red.
“Yes, I see them.”
“Touch any of them and speak; your voice will be broadcast over all localized radio frequencies,” says Nanny Theresa. “Anyone who has a radio in a twenty-mile radius will hear you.”
“Good. Sable said I could watch the launch from the security cameras, which means the rockets carrying the satellites must be nearby somewhere. Do you know where?”
“The silos are situated beneath a field five miles beyond Dome Three. What are you thinking of doing, child?”
“Anything I can,” I reply as I stare up at one of the red strips revolving around the side of the sphere and will myself toward it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In a white flash, I cross the twenty-five miles to the side of the sphere in less than a second and arrive in front of a wide red band. It is about fifteen feet high and stretches right around the entire sphere, and shimmering just below its transparent surface are what appear to be thousands of dancing yellow sine waves. I quickly drift up to where the red strip borders the blue one, and after a deep and nervous breath, I place my hand against the red.
Deafening noise suddenly hits me like a slap to the face. I screw my eyes shut and clench my teeth. My head feels like it’s going to burst with sound. There are a million different noises coming from every direction. Tweets, whistles, hisses, low-pitched droning tones, high-pitched screeches, warbles, all of it roaring in my ears.
“Hello?” I shout. “Can anyone hear me?” I didn’t expect to be able to hear myself through the loud and scattered turbulence of sound, but the moment I speak, my words are crisp and clear and seem to push a path through the noise like ripples in water.
“Finn? Is that you?” says a very surprised-sounding Brody, and I can actually see a thin yellow line dancing along with his voice beneath the surface of the red band.
I’m so happy to hear him. “It’s me, Brody. Bit and I are trapped inside the mainframe.”
“But, I’m standing beside you,” says Brody. “I’m looking at you right now.”
“There’s no time to explain. How is Bit?”
“Worse than before, Finn, and you look pretty bad, too. After you touched her, I tried to cut Bit’s hand off, but something weird happened. The cut keeps healing before I can saw halfway through. I tried really hard to pull both of you away, but it’s like you guys are glued to the floor.”
“Brody, just listen. I need you to leave us there and get to the main courtyard in Sector A.”
“What? Why?” asks Brody.
“The transports that we saw in the sky, I need you to see if they’ve landed there.”
“Commander!” shouts Gazelle. In the background I can hear a rustling, scuttling sound, then the horrible droning, crackling foghorn sound of a R.A.M.’s rail gun.
“Gazelle!” I shout out. “Come in! Gazelle?”
“I’m here, Commander,” she yells.
“Where are you?” I shout.
“We’re in the courtyard in Sector A. Five transports landed. We loaded the Blackstone security staff from the emergency shelter and a few wounded soldiers into them. But then the spiders came at us like a tidal wave, and only two transports managed to get away. We’re pinned down and taking heavy fire from three R.A.M.s approaching from the south. The thermal wristbands are hiding us from the brain spiders, but they’re confusing the R.A.M.s, and they’re firing wildly, shooting up the place! Commander Zero has a—”
There’s another loud, droning blast of rail-gun fire and the sound of concrete shattering.
“Gazelle!”
She doesn’t reply.
“Gazelle! Are you there?”
No answer.
I need to know what’s happening out there. I look above me and see the neighboring strip on the wall of the sphere is a blue camera feed. I blink to the border where the red strip meets the blue and slap my other hand onto it. At least two hundred holoscreens open up before my now blue-tinted vision. They’re stacked one on top of another in long curving rows all around me, and each one has a different picture on it and a location typed in the lower left corner. When I turn my head to the left, all the screens begin scrolling right, and when I turn to the right, they all scroll left.
I quickly get the hang of it and begin searching through the images for a view of the courtyard. Most of the pictures on the screens are displaying empty rooms and laboratories and deserted pathways and gardens outside, so it doesn’t take long to find a group of thirty or so holoscreens that are absolutely frantic with activity.
I squint my eyes at one of the screens, trying to spot one of the Saviors, and all of a sudden, it quickly moves toward me and envelops my entire head, filling my whole field of view with a live camera feed looking down over the courtyard in Sector A. The courtyard looks like a war zone mixed with something out of a twisted nature show as Lobots scuttle all over the ground in every direction, like thousands of ants on an anthill. Standing among those ants, the three R.A.M.s wave their weaponized arms to and fro as the projectiles from their rail guns tear gouges out of the already crumbling and battle-scarred frontages of the buildings lining the courtyard.
As I turn my head, my view suddenly changes, and I’m transported to another camera. Now I’m inside one of the buildings, looking out a window level with the head of one of the R.A.M.s.
I turn my head again, and I switch to a camera in another room as rail-gun fire sends a torrent of pulverized concrete and huge billows of dust flying into what used to be someone’s office.
I desperately scan for movement through the clouds of grit, and I breathe a sigh of relief when I see them: Gazelle, Mantis, Commander Zero, Bulldog, and Jackdaw are frantically crawling on their bellies through the debris of the torn-apart room. Commander Zero’s wavy shock of thick black hair drapes over the sides of his combat mask and visor. Commander Zero begins signing to Mantis, and I’m guessing Infinity is somehow translating it in my head, because I can understand everything that he’s saying.
“Weak . . . spot,” he says with his gestures.
Mantis nods, and then hundreds of skittering purple beams suddenly emanate from the array of lenses on her face. The bright laser lines shine through the dust, dancing across the wooden floorboards, and after a few seconds, they all collect into one single glowing spot.
Commander Zero nods at her, then signals to Jackdaw. “Cut.”
Jack quickly scrambles across the floor to where Mantis indicated. He rips open a Velcro flap on the thigh of his black combat-style pants, and underneath is what appears to be a collection of twenty or so metal fingers. Each is differently shaped into pincers, blades, and a multitude of other assorted tools. Running around the border of the tools is some kind of jagged metal string. Jackdaw slaps it with his cybernetic hand. The string quickly reels into place along the edge of his open palm and all the way around the tips of his extended metallic fingers, converting his hand into a mini chain saw. The saw whirs into action, and sawdust streams into the air as Jack quickly gouges a large X-shaped cut into the wooden floor.
Jack scrambles to the side as Zero signals to Bulldog. “Break.”
Concern ripples through me as rail-gun fire gores another hole in one of the rapidly crumbling walls, but Lila doesn’t even flinch as she lies flat on her stomach with her formidable cybernetic arms down by her sides. The seams between her silver muscles begin glowing bright red, and suddenly both of her arms incredibly swing completely backward, up off the floor, over her head to slam down directly in the center of the roughly hewn X. The floorboards rupture from Lila’s double sledgehammer strike and fall into the room below, leaving a hole big enough for everyone to escape through, one at a time.
Commander Zero signals, �
�Go.” Bulldog slides through the hole headfirst, and one after another the rest follow until only Gazelle and Zero are left.
Commander Zero still has the large army-green metal tube strapped to his back, the rocket launcher or bazooka of some kind. He lifts the strap up over his head, lays the tube down beside him, and checks a small black screen on the side of it. “CHARGING 99 PERCENT” flashes in big yellow-glowing letters. Commander Zero taps impatiently until the readout changes to bright green: “FULL CAPACITY 100 PERCENT.” He gives Gazelle a thumbs-up with his metal hand and then signs the word “Ready?”
She nods and then shuffles on her stomach through the hole. I switch my camera view again to the room below. Now I can see all the Saviors crouching low among the broken office furniture, waiting for Commander Zero to drop in from above. Through a hole in one of the office walls, I glimpse something moving. My heart suddenly skips a beat as the legs of one of the R.A.M.s stomp into view just outside the room. The Saviors are trapped in a battle-scarred, pockmark-ridden space on the brink of collapse, with three giant green killing machines just outside. I don’t know if Commander Zero knows what he’s doing, but if he has some kind of plan, I hope to hell that it’s the best one he’s ever had, because right now, I can’t see any way out of this, and it’s seriously shredding my last nerve.
Everyone is crouching low as Commander Zero drops into the room, glances out of a section of crumbled wall, and then immediately signals to Gazelle. “Bait.”
Debris sprays up from the floor as Gazelle takes off like a shot, sprinting at top speed through a blasted-open part of a wall and out into the open expanse of the courtyard.
Immediately fearing for her safety, I involuntarily lunge my head forward after her, and my camera view suddenly switches again to an outside shot of the courtyard.
I watch through the camera feed as Gazelle goes bounding through a writhing sea of Lobots. The domed heads of the three R.A.M.s swivel in her direction, and they raise their massive arms. I can hardly watch as the R.A.M.s’ rail guns burst with blazing fire toward Gazelle. Torrents of projectiles tear dozens of Lobots to shreds in her wake as she strides at an incredible speed across the courtyard.
