by Brandt Legg
By the middle of the day, Drast was able to fly to PAWN Command for his long-imagined reunion with Chelle. Osc stayed behind to oversee the final stage of the takeover by the AOI Allies. The Chief was hunkered down in her Washington bunker. By nightfall, they would bomb it into oblivion, if their inside agents couldn’t kill her before then.
For several minutes Drast and Chelle remained locked in an embrace, neither quite believing the other was actually in their arms. They breathed in each other’s essence intensely, as if they’d been drowning for years and had finally found oxygen again.
“For a thousand days and nights, I have thought of this moment,” Drast said. “Without the possibility of it, I would have ceased to be and died in that prison.”
She kissed him with the pent up fervor of a woman who’d lost too much. Too many loves buried, too much time wasted with fear and regret, and all the desperate moments layered in angst and buried in terror. She recalled the years of their youth when, as idealistic revolutionaries, they talked of changing the world. None of the shocking scenes she’d witnessed during the war had ever been imagined then, and certainly not the incomprehensible loss of life.
“We believed we could make the world a better place just by uncovering the truth, reinstating real freedom,” she said. “Do you remember?”
“Of course, I do,” he said between breathless kisses. “But it was so much more complicated than we knew . . . Damn it. Damn the Aylantik!”
“But we’ve done it, we’ve changed so much more than we ever dreamed. If Sidis is right, then we have ushered in destiny. Everything will be beyond different. It’s‒it’s impossible to picture. Can you see it, Polis?”
“What?”
“The future. Can you imagine the change if Sidis is right?” She stared into his eyes. “What is to become of us? What is to become . . . of everything?”
They didn’t hear the high altitude bomber. They didn’t see the three Sonic-bombs whizzing toward PAWN Command. They didn’t feel the force of the explosion. They knew only their love and that they were together, at long last, together.
They died in an instant.
Thousands of kilometers away from the ruined PAWN Command, Munna, sitting quietly on the deck of the Moon Shadow, shuddered, as if chilled. Tears formed in her eyes, but not full enough to fall. “Oh,” she said softly to herself. “They’re gone.”
A top P-Force leader reported the find. A large cache of AOI Sonic-bombs had been captured in the California Area. Miner knew just what to do with them, but he couldn’t let Sarlo know. She would never approve.
He looked across the office. She was working a series of VMs, trying to locate confiscated PharmaForce assets.
The war had indeed turned, and he could see peace again on the horizon. There was much to do to prepare. The world would be different, and he was determined to decide how different. Miner flipped his sliver dollar and smiled at his good fortune.
Less than half an hour before P-Force stumbled upon the Sonic-bombs, he’d received word from a special unit he had tracking the Imps. They’d narrowed the Trapciers’ leadership location to the Phoenix-Prescott section of the Arizona Area. They had once been two separate cities, but in the past seventy-five years they’d grown into one large metropolis of more than twelve million people. And somewhere in that tangle of humanity were what he considered the greatest threat to the future of the human race; the Imps.
There might not be another chance. The Imps were always moving. And anyway, he thought, the strike will get blamed on the AOI. No one will ever know.
He opened a private screen and issued the order. Thirty-one minutes later, more than twelve million people would be dead, including the twenty-seven most powerful Imps and CHRUDEs.
“I wonder if your damned machines predicted that, you torgon vampires,” Miner said quietly when he saw the live images of the flattening of the largest city in the Arizona Area. “Did you see that one coming, Sidis? You arrogant torg?” He smiled when he thought about the outrage people would feel toward the Chief.
Just one more city destroyed. Peace prevails, always.
Chapter 74 - Book 3
Deuce got word about Chelle and Drast less than an hour after it happened. His people had picked it up on satellite coverage. BLAXERs arrived soon after, but no one expected to find anything.
And they didn’t. The destruction was total. There was nothing left. But at least he could tell Osc that they’d tried. He was preparing for the awful task of informing Osc that his mother was dead when Miner zoomed.
“We’re mopping up,” Miner said. “Those Imps might have been right, at least about the war.”
“PAWN Command just got obliterated,” Deuce said.
“Wow . . . I guess the Dragon Lady has some fight left in her.”
“Chelle Andreas and Polis Drast were both killed in the bombing,” Deuce said. He knew Drast was there only because it had been one of his Flo-wings that had taken him there. The AOI “birds” were all in combat.
“Drast finally got his, and Chelle Andreas was nothing but trouble,” Miner said. “Good news, really.”
“How do you sleep? How do you even look at yourself in the mirror?”
Miner thought of his nightmares and realized that he’d never slept well. “I’m a handsome man,” he said. “I never mind looking in the mirror.”
“Are we done here?” Deuce asked, weary of everything about Miner.
“The Chief is going to have to die,” Miner said. “She’s just proven that as long as she’s inside that bunker, she is a threat.”
“Of course she will, but you have a vested interest,” Deuce said.
“I have a hundred reasons to kill that creature, but none of them matters more than the fact that she annihilated hundreds of millions of innocents.”
“With your drugs,” Deuce said.
“And you? Are you to be judged for providing the weapons and technology that allowed the AOI to carry out their atrocities?”
“It’s not the same,” Deuce said. “My products were misused. Yours were used exactly as directed. Yours were meant for one purpose - extermination.”
“That’s a lie. They were intended to control. Killing was a last resort. That decision was not made by me.”
“You made that decision as soon as you manufactured the pharmaceuticals.”
“This conversation is about the Chief.”
“You are forever linked with her, Lance. What do you think is going to happen when the one and a half billion survivors of this final war learn the cause of the new plague that wiped out nearly half the population? Is their blame, their vengeance, going to end with the Chief? Do you think that is a reasonable expectation for this kind of grief?”
“I’ll decide what they know.”
“Will you?” Deuce asked. “Didn’t you hear what else Sidis predicted?”
“He doesn’t know‒‒”
“What about Munna? And the List Keepers? The world you created is over.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Lance, do you believe in karma?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so,” Deuce said. “Well, you will soon.”
Chapter 75 - Book 3
As Grandyn, Fye, and Cogs were entering the next room, they found an old woman was waiting for them. She hugged Fye, whispered something in her ear, and then left.
Fye looked at Grandyn and he knew something was wrong. “What?”
“PAWN Command was hit. No survivors.”
“Chelle?”
“We’ve confirmed that she and Polis Drast were there at impact. They’re didn’t make it.”
Grandyn shook his head and thought of Nelson. “When?”
“That’s hard to say,” Fye said. “Time’s a funny thing.”
“Meaning?”
“Down here, in and among the time-maps, memories and history glows. It feels a little different.” She looked at Cogs for help.
“You probably
still feel like it’s Saturday,” Cogs said to Grandyn.
“Yeah.”
“I believe it’s actually Sunday now,” Cogs said, looking to Fye for verification.
“It is Sunday,” Fye confirmed. “Chelle and Drast died on Sunday.”
Grandyn looked confused. “If it’s Sunday, what happened to Saturday night? Why didn’t we sleep?”
“You need less sleep in the City,” Cogs explained, as if that should be obvious.
“I thought we didn’t need to worry about the war,” Grandyn said to Fye.
“We can do only so much,” Fye replied. “But everything changed once we got here. A kind of destiny lock was initiated. You’ll understand soon.”
Grandyn trusted her, but he wished he could have done something to save Chelle and Drast. What was the point of making it to the List Keepers’ City if they couldn’t help PAWN and end the war?
He looked around the room. It was far less exciting than the last one with the large colored globes, but it had its own mystery. The tall, cylindrical shape offered a strange perspective, as it were almost daylight where they were, but twenty meters above them it seemed almost completely black except for a handful of “stars.” The “night sky” added to his bewilderment about time. Nine tunnels led from the room.
“Which one?” Grandyn asked, wanting to move on. He was determined to talk to whoever was in charge about ending the war. He’d heard Cogs and Fye mention being able only to make infinitesimal changes, but surely, with all this power, technology, or whatever was, he believed they could do something.
“We’re not going into any of them,” Fye said. “We’re going down.” She pointed to an opening in the center of the narrow room.
Grandyn strode over to it.
“Careful,” she said, stopping him from looking into the hole just as a clear tube emerged from the depths. It appeared to be some sort of glass elevator framed in a matte black metal.
“Shall we?” she said, ushering him inside as the doors parted.
“Where’s it go?” he asked.
“To where you want to go. You’ll get to talk to the person who knows the most about all this.”
“What about Cogs?” he asked as their descent began without the old man.
“You’ll see him again.”
The elevator moved more slowly than those he was used to in modern buildings. As soon as they had dropped a few meters, all light disappeared, leaving them in a dim blue hue. Although the ride was a bit claustrophobic, fresh air filtered in from somewhere. After a minute that felt like ten, he asked, “How long does it take?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but I think it’s about two minutes.”
“How deep do we go?”
“I don’t know . . . deep.”
The doors opened to yet another world, a glowing purple one. He walked unsteadily from the tube and gazed at a seemingly endless tunnel filled on either side with large towers about twice his height. Like everything else he’d seen in the City, they were curved. They looked to be made of glass and light, but as he got closer he realized that each tower contained thousands of INUs.
“Is this the storage?” Grandyn asked.
“Yes,” she replied.
He stared down into the open center aisle and into a bright, far-off light. Now he was almost convinced this was all a dream. Either that, or he had died.
“Walk into the light,” he whispered.
Fye laughed, knowing what he must be thinking. “How could I have ever described the City to you?”
“Never in a million years would I have believed this place existed.”
She nodded, vindicated in her silence.
“Are they down there?” he asked, pointing to the light. “Whoever’s in charge?”
“Yes,” she answered, smiling. “Let’s go meet the future.”
Chapter 76 - Book 3
Deep inside the Washington AOI bunker, the Chief celebrated the strike against PAWN Command as a major victory.
“Next we’ll cut off the Trapciers, and then on to that traitor, Lance Miner.”
Recent intelligence had narrowed the location of the Imps leadership to the Arizona Area, and showed that Miner must be in either the northern New York Area, or the adjacent part of what used to be Canada. With the lack of full satellite coverage, and the complete destruction, it would be fifteen minutes before the Phoenix-Prescott massacre reached the AOI.
“We’ll have them located within the hour, ma’am,” a general told her.
“And then we’ll track down that swine Deuce Lipton and finish this unpleasantness,” the Chief said. She was already planning a major pushback against Drast’s AOI Allies. Now that he was dead, she believed her internal opposition would crumble.
The Chief excused herself and walked into her private restroom. Two AOI Allies were waiting for her.
Because no weapons were allowed on that level, the two men had to overpower her, which they easily did, in less than five seconds. It took another twenty seconds to strangle her with a belt. Three more seconds to tidy up and arrange the Chief as if she’d had a stroke and fallen off the toilet, and in less than thirty seconds, the world was rid of the most lethal creature that had ever walked the earth.
Now they hoped that the rest of the plan could be implemented before her closest aides realized her death had not been natural. In the end, the bunker would still fall, it was only a matter of how many would die in taking it. The outside monitoring equipment was jammed, thanks to technology controlled by Deuce. Within minutes, Flo-wings landed, depositing a force of more than one thousand elite BLAXERs. The rebel loyalists inside the bunker did their best to coordinate with the outside invaders, but the bunker was heavily defended, and there were only a few dozen Allies inside. The battle raged for hours, but it was enough to change the fate of millions who otherwise would have been bombed.
During the battle for the bunker, AOI command and control were essentially shut down. No new missions were scheduled, and troops and equipment were left to fend for themselves around the world. P-Force, Trapcier’s android armies, and BLAXERS moved in and scored almost continuous defeats against the AOI wolves. At the same time, the AOI Allies, led by Osc, seized what was left of AOI wolf operations worldwide.
By the time the sun set in Seattle, there was no doubt the rebels had won. It would be another two days before the bunker fell, and all AOI assets around the globe were in rebel hands, but they had won.
There were no celebrations. Osc ranted bitterly at how close his mother and Drast had come to seeing their dream fulfilled.
“They knew,” Deuce had told him. “They knew the AOI was finished.”
But Osc didn’t think that was good enough. The Chief had still been alive. She had killed them, the same as if she’d personally twisted a knife in their guts. He pictured the cruel old woman licking their blood from her sharp blade. Deuce also asked Osc to stay and lead the AOI during the transition.
“The transition to what?” Osc asked.
“To a world where they are never needed again. Where weapons and cameras aren’t used against people, where secrets and lies don’t exist . . . a world unlike anything we’ve ever known before.”
Osc didn’t know if it was possible, but he agreed to help because he knew his mother and Drast would want him to, and because his old world was destroyed. So if he were going to keep on living, a new world would have to be created.
As soon as Lance received the news that the Chief was dead, he called an emergency meeting of the surviving Council members. They would gather in New York City in order to pool resources and consolidate power against Deuce. P-Force was working on liberating PharmaForce assets from AOI control. It was dark when the Flo-wing arrived to take him to the Council meeting. Sarlo would stay in Toronto until they moved their operations to one of PharmaForce’s larger campuses.
“I’ll zoom you as soon as the meeting is over,” he said as they exchanged farewells on the roof.
<
br /> In an uncharacteristic move, Sarlo hugged him. They had been through so much that it seemed natural. Afterwards, he stood and looked at her. No one in the world was closer to him, not his even his wife or children.
“We’ll see each other tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Lots to do . . . a fortune to make.” He smiled. “It’ll be us or Deuce running things from now on. I plan on making sure it’s us.”
Sarlo nodded and waved as he boarded the Flo-wing. She watched him take off from the roof and fly high over the lake, beautiful in its reflection of the city’s skyline. A moment later she saw a dark figure plunge from the Flo-wing and drop into the cold water of Lake Ontario, and she knew Lance Miner was dead.
Two silent tears fell from her eyes before she turned and went back into the building. There was “lots to do,” especially with all the members of the Council not expected to live through the night.
There could have been years of war crimes trials, but that would have delayed the changes and the healing. It was better to have things handled this way, in the closing hours of the war.
“A fresh start,” Blaise had told Sarlo. “This time truly a fresh start.”
Sarlo went immediately back to work. The war might be ending, but the real killer was still efficiently wiping out entire cities and towns. The new plague still had to be stopped.
Chapter 77 - Book 3
Monday, July 18
Grandyn and Fye had been walking for twenty minutes and still weren’t near the end of the purple corridor. Grandyn could feel the energy from the towers. It penetrated his body, made it difficult to walk. It was as if he were passing through collected events of the world all at once. He felt the severity of the war, the loss of millions of lives, tragedies of immeasurable proportions . . . except they were being measured. The List Keepers had it all.
“How long is this place?” Grandyn asked.
