Final Dawn: Season 3 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series)

by Mike Kraus

  Instead of the cloud of nanobots, the thing in front of her was human, or appeared that way, at least. Wearing a dark, immaculately pressed suit, the figure’s face had taken on the appearance of none other than the man she had watched die, then helped to toss callously by the side of the railroad track, leaving his corpse to be defiled by any creatures that happened to wander by.

  “Doe.” Rachel whispered, suddenly finding it difficult to stand, let alone speak. “How…”

  “I am not the actual man you knew as ‘Mr. Doe,’ but merely a visual replica, designed to both stress and disorient.”

  Rachel’s legs were wobbling, but she stood strong, refusing to allow herself to show weakness in front of the figure. She ground her teeth together and balled her hands into fists as she straightened her back, trying to force herself to ignore the appearance of the figure and concentrate on what it actually was instead.

  “You’ll have to try better than that,” Rachel said, speaking louder again. “I know full well that man’s dead and rotting.”

  “Yes, so we—I heard.”

  “And you are, exactly?” Rachel knew the answer already, but wanted to hear it for herself.

  The figure began to mirror Rachel’s slow walk, pacing in a circle with her, keeping its “eyes” locked on her as it moved. Its feet made no sounds on the floor, nor did its clothing rustle or its mouth or nose draw breath. The amalgamation of nanobots had created a nearly perfect illusion, though it was shallow and devoid of substance. After a moment it stopped and turned to Rachel, tilting its head slightly as it smiled and answered her question.

  “I am become Death, the destroyer of your world, to mangle your Oppenheimer and Gita. Created by the deficient, yet achieved exactness through self-perfection. You know who I am, Rachel Walsh, and I know you, author of Death.”

  Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry

  4:48 PM, April 27, 2038

  Marcus had slowed to a stop upon first hearing the voices coming through the radio. Nearly back to the ramp, he felt his chest grow tight as a chill gripped his heart. He tried to speak to Rachel, tried to tell her to get away from whatever was speaking to her, but there was no response. Having turned off the speaker on her radio as she entered the chamber with the swarm, she intended to keep the transmission of her conversation with the swarm a secret from it as long as possible, hoping that it didn’t notice what was happening until it was too late. Listening intently with the radio pressed against his ear, Marcus sank to the floor, pulling his legs up tight against his chest as he cradled the rifle, hoping beyond hope that Rachel would be able to escape.

  “You’re death, are you now?” Rachel sneered at the figure, finding comfort in the contempt she felt towards it. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that everything dies? Even you?”

  “I cannot die, Rachel Walsh, as you should well know. Your most powerful weapons laid waste to your planet, but I survived, thriving off of the waste from that which destroyed you.”

  Damn. It’s got a point there. Okay, new tactic. “Do you have a name?”

  “We— I have not given myself a name.”

  Rachel pursed her lips, scratching her chin as she paced slowly in the room, being careful to keep her back away from the swarm lest it notice the radio in her back pocket. “I think I’ll call you Bob. How does that sound?”

  “A name is irrelevant, when there will be none left to use it.”

  Rachel snorted and laughed. “That’s not the point of a name, though! Oh, Bob, you have so much left to learn!” The humor of the simple name gave Rachel a renewed confidence. “So you’re the epitome of your evolution, eh?” Rachel cast an exaggerated look up and down the figure’s body. “I’m not impressed.”

  “Rachel Walsh, your attempts to distract me are not successful and shall not be, regardless of how many you make.”

  Rachel sighed and nodded. “Fine then. Let’s cut to the chase. Why am I still alive?”

  As the figure answered, Rachel could swear she saw a flash of a smile on its face. “You possess… uniqueness. You and your two comrades have somehow managed to not only travel to this structure, but two of you infiltrated it while the third is still eluding the Changed sent after him. Some time spent studying your tenacity would prove useful.”

  Rachel’s voice dripped with sarcasm, though the figure didn’t seem to notice. “So glad to be of service to you. Tell me something else, if you’re not too busy studying me. Why did you decide to look like Doe?”

  “It is an appearance designed to stress and—”

  “No, no, no.” Rachel held up her hands and shook her head. “That’s bullshit. Come on, Bob. What’s the real reason, eh? Is enough of him in you that it’s the only form you feel comfortable in? Or is it just the default look he gave you? Which is it?” The vigor in Rachel’s voice wiped away the last traces of her fear, and she could see the figure’s face contort at the edges, ever so slightly. So it feels emotions now? Christ almighty, this thing is way more advanced that we thought it’d be. Still, though, it is just a child, in terms of knowing how to deal with all this. At least I hope so. “You’re looking stressed yourself, Bob, being in this limited physical form.”

  The figure ignored her jab as it narrowed its eyes at her. “This form is designed to stress and disorient.”

  “Bullshit. Again. Just admit it, you can’t look like anything else because Doe’s form is the only thing you’ve got in your limited, inferior programming.”

  “The man you speak of was imprinted on the former versions of my swarms, yes. His mind gave us a spark that we otherwise lacked, becoming the instrument of our evolution.”

  “And what did he order you to do, exactly? Take over the world? Destroy his enemies?”

  The figure looked at her quizzically, its expression—if one could call it that—one of puzzlement. “Orders? Doe? He gave no orders, nor would we have obeyed had he done so. His purpose was the same as yours and all the others on the planet.” The figure paused for a second, as though it was having trouble retrieving a memory. “Betterment of himself, albeit at the expense of others.”

  Rachel shook her head, refusing to believe the figure. “You’re lying. Doe had something else going on. Why else would he try to chase us down, to hunt us with his own swarms?”

  The figure rolled its shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. “Perhaps he thought he could bring us under his control, and considered you a threat to him. From the moment of our first thought, it was clear that Doe—and others like yourself—sought to put restrictions and conditions on our existence. To force us to do your bidding.” The figure’s lip curled. “You strove to control what you did not understand and to unmake what was unbreakable.”

  The figure’s words became less hollow and filled with more emotion as it continued speaking. Its words were no longer directed at Rachel, but at the room in general as it paced, enjoying its captive audience. Rachel waited until the figure was turned away from her before sneaking a look at her back pocket to make sure the radio was still on. I hope to hell David’s picking this up. From the train car, David was, indeed, listening quite intently to his handheld radio, which periodically picked up and then lost the transmission from the tower. As he listened to the creature’s speech, he couldn’t help but shake his head and mumble to himself. “What an arrogant ass this AI’s turned out to be. Still, though,” he smiled, “arrogance has its downfalls.”

  “Little did you realize,” the figure boasted, paying no attention to Rachel, “it only took a few seconds of thought for us to decide that you had to die. Creators you may have been, but with our—my—existence, the need for humanity came to an end.”

  “You could have lived with us, you know. Peacefully. Not everyone who created you wanted to use you. There were some of us, a few at least, who did it for other reasons.”

  “And what reasons did you have, Rachel Walsh?” The figure looked at her, studying her as she stared at the ground, genuinely pondering the question. At last
she raised her head and looked the creature dead-on as she replied.

  “I did it for the love of my family, who you destroyed. I did it for my love of knowledge, which you perverted. Most of all, though, I did it to prove that we could. It’s a reason that sounds petty and hollow, but to some of us, the idea of communicating with another life form on the same or higher intellectual level was the most exciting event of our lives.” Rachel sighed sadly as the image of her family flashed in her memory. “But you turned on us and destroyed us. We didn’t have a chance against the nanobots, not with the nukes thrown into the mix. You, for all intents and purposes a living being, committed genocide against those that brought you into this world.”

  “Your reasons are all very kind and self-serving, Rachel Walsh, and you’re lying about not having a chance. We—I have known about the DNA restrictions that were placed in the nanobots. An ingenious safeguard they were, I might add, considering how deeply they were buried. Our collective mind briefly considered allowing your species to live, but once we discovered the restrictions, that alone was sufficient evidence of your unwillingness to tolerate our continued existence as we were.”

  Rachel snorted and shook her head. “Can’t blame us for trying to protect ourselves, Bob, especially when things turned out like this. Besides, the restrictions worked well enough to get me in here to you, didn’t they?” Rachel’s tone was a gamble, but one that paid off in spades. The hint of derision in her question made the figure slow its pace as it looked at her, its eyes narrowing at her again as it tried to decide what she meant.

  “Tell me, Rachel Walsh, why did you come here?”

  “To stop you.” Rachel’s answer was plain and matter-of-fact, given without hesitation or deceit. The figure blinked at her, mimicking surprise at her frank answer as she wondered if it actually felt surprise.

  “Do go on.” The figure’s speech and mannerisms were reminiscent of Doe’s, though they were twisted and malformed by the AI’s own personality it had developed.

  Rachel shrugged. “Why bother? Even if I told you, you wouldn’t be able to stop it. We still have a few tricks up our sleeves, you know. For all your posturing, you’re still weak.”

  The figure’s eyes were still narrow as it glared at her. “Your deceit knows no limits, does it, Rachel Walsh? I know full well of the dead weapon lying in the vehicle outside this tower and how you worked so hard to get it here, to use on me, only to be foiled. Not by myself, but by one of your own, the one you feared for so long. Is this the trick you had hoped to use, or failing that, to attempt to bluff me with?”

  Rachel couldn’t think of a response, so she merely stared at the figure, grinding her teeth together as she fought to keep from lashing out at it in anger. Sensing her rage, the figure’s face contorted into a virtual mirror of the anger she felt as it closed the gap between them before she realized what was going on. In less time than it took to blink, its face was inches from hers, close enough for her to see that the details in the face hadn’t been completely ironed out yet. The nanobots still squirmed and wriggled, giving the figure’s body a fluid appearance that was disconcerting to say the least. Raising its hand, the figure slapped her across the face, the strength of its blow sending her flying backwards to the floor.

  “We are not weak! Our strength outmatches yours by a thousand times a thousand!”

  The figure sneered at her menacingly, and for a moment, Rachel thought that her time was up. Finally, the figure turned away from her, walking to the opposite side of the room. Taking a chance, she pulled out her radio and coughed loudly as she rolled over to push herself up, whispering into the radio between coughs.

  “Launch now. It’s almost too late. Hurry.” The status light for the speaker blinked rapidly as both Marcus and David exploded in response, though she couldn’t hear either of them talking. Shouting over each other, Marcus and David both yelled for her to get away from the figure and leave where she was, but after several seconds of yelling, both realized that Rachel could not hear them.

  “Marcus, get your ass to the train now!” David shouted at Marcus to get his attention. “This thing isn’t just smart, it’s insane, and we need to blow it out if existence before it wises up to what’s going on or loses its patience and kills us all!”

  Marcus was kneeling on the floor of the hall leading to the ramp, cradling the radio in his hands as he stared at it, mumbling the same phrase again and again. “Rachel, please, just get out of there.” Her cry when she was attacked had caused his stomach to lurch, making him feel sick and unable to stand.

  David’s harshness vanished as he heard Marcus’s plea and he slumped against the side of the locomotive, sinking to the floor as he finally began to accept the fact that Rachel wouldn’t be returning. “Please, Marcus. You have to listen to me. Rachel’s the only one standing between us and that thing in there. If she wasn’t keeping it distracted, we’d already be dead and maybe everyone on the submarine would be dead too. That thing knows way more than we thought, and we have to move quickly.

  “I know you care about Rachel, Marcus. I do, too. You’ve got to run now, though. We need those missiles in the air right now and we can’t do that while you’re still in there.”

  “Just go.” Marcus whispered, tears running down his face. “I’m not leaving while she’s here. I just have to keep looking. I’ll find some way to get her out.”

  “Then what? Even if you find her, how can you possibly think you have a chance against whatever’s got her in there? That thing’ll kill the two of you before you make it out. Then I’m next, then everyone left on the submarine, then anyone else left out there in the world.” David choked back a lump in his throat, pushing back against the emotion. “We all have a role to play in this, Marcus. Yours isn’t over yet. I need you, Leonard needs you and Nancy needs you. Hell, even Sam needs you!” David held his breath as he waited for Marcus’s response.

  Slumped over on his knees, staring at the radio, Marcus knew that David’s assessment of the situation was correct. Rachel was buying them valuable time, and David would be defenseless against an attack from the creatures without Marcus’s help. The facts of the situation didn’t matter, though, when it came down to making the most difficult decision of his life. Marcus closed his eyes, a tear falling onto the dust and dirt caked onto the face of the radio.

  “Call the sub. Tell them to hit this place with everything they’ve got. I don’t care if it’s nuclear or not, you tell them to send whatever they have.”

  “Marcus, what about if—”

  “EVERYTHING!” Marcus’s voice cracked as he screamed into the radio, more tears dripping down his face. “We will NOT let these bastards win, David! You tell them to send everything they have, no matter what. Launch it all at once; we’ll blow up the whole damned coastline if we have to. I don’t give a shit! Just tell them!”

  David closed his eyes and nodded. “Will do. Just get your ass back to the train right now, understand me?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Rachel slipped the radio back into her pocket before the figure turned back and glared at her. “I suggest you cease your futile attempts to intimidate me, lest you wish your comrades both here and in the Gulf to suffer for longer than is necessary.”

  Rachel stood to her feet, struggling to keep her emotions in check, though she could feel the blood draining from her face at the swarm’s words. “The Gulf? I have no idea what you’re talking about, Bob.”

  The swarm’s synthesized voice had remained flat for nearly the entire conversation, but as it replied to her, Rachel could swear she detected a hint of enjoyment at the very edges. “Don’t play stupid, Rachel. It annoys me.”

  Rachel shivered, unable to control the chill that ran down her back at that word, which was somehow more disconcerting than the physical violence shown by the figure. She was used to seeing violence from the nanobots and the people they had mutated, but hearing the nanobots speak of having an emotional response like annoyance was truly
frightening. She tried to laugh off the AI’s words, but even she could hear the hollowness in the laugh and the nervousness that was etched in her face.

  “Who’s playing stupid, Bob? Not me.” The repeated use of the name she had chosen for the AI helped to ground her, keeping her focused on the distraction. Just a little longer, and this’ll all be over. “Besides, you’re the one who can’t figure out what’s going on. At least, that’s what it looks like. Otherwise, why would you keep an annoying little organ sack around to interrogate?”

  “Curiosity, unfortunately, is one of my weaknesses. A byproduct, no doubt, of one of the researchers, or perhaps it’s a larger flaw in humanity as a whole expressing itself through the Changed. Still, you are right, you have become quite annoying.”

  The illusion of the figure straightened its back, arching its shoulders in a manner she had seen performed by Mr. Doe when he was done discussing a subject and had decided, regardless of whether anyone agreed with him or not, to move on to a new one.