Suffrage (World Key Chronicles Book 1)

by Julian St Aubyn Green

  Two Elites, in a move that seemed coordinated, fired on them from opposite sides, multiple bolts striking the strong shield and failing to penetrate deeply enough.

  “Think they are close enough?” Snake whispered urgently.

  Sarge considered it for a moment. “Next blast from the pyro, when they can’t see, do it.”

  “You ready for this, Sheila?” Snake asked as his left hand cramped on the neck. He ignored the twinge of pain.

  “I’m ready. I still think I should advise against such a course of actio—”

  Snake interrupted Sheila, “We can’t last much longer darl’. We might as well end this show with some fireworks.”

  As another ribbon of flowing fire slithered around a corner, Sarge bellowed, “Now, Snake!” Gritting his teeth, Snake slammed his hand against the strings to silence them for the moment he needed to begin a new sequence of notes.

  He flipped the reverb up to maximum and madly struck the fastest melodic rhythm he could manage, his fingers flying over the strings in a blur of movement that left red streaks dripping down the instrument’s neck and control switches.

  In the air around the two Rebels, an immense wave of force built with a crescendo before blasting out in all directions. Like a jet dumping fuel to burn in the jet stream, Sheila pumped everything she had into this force wall and forcibly drained her batteries in the process.

  Snake had unleashed a localized earthquake. With rock and roll.

  Above and below them, the force cracked the rocks before ballooning out in multiple waves of immense, concussive force. Snake stood, feet braced as if in a gale. He rode the harmonic, playing like he was burning his soul for fuel in this last-ditch attempt.

  As the final wave left the instrument, he slumped, spent, to the cracked rocks beneath him.

  He watched Sarge explode forward, sprinting behind the wave like some kind of malignant spirit of destruction. The spring-green light of the receding force wall outlined her charging form in an almost spectral fashion. As she passed passageways, she fired shinkari bolts from rifle and pistol, and Snake was certain she dealt death with merciless efficiency to anyone caught flat in the wake of that force wave.

  As Snake tried to get his breath back, he heard her scream.

  “Die, you fucking Royal!”

  Her primal roar of rage echoed around the rock walls to the accompanying sound of shinkari bolts making wet splats. The cave answered with an ominous rumble.

  At the sound of falling stone, Snake struggled to get to his feet. With an abrupt shift, the shattered rock floor beneath him gave way and he fell for untold meters before landing heavily enough to feel something snap. Screaming, he crumpled into an ungainly pile and heard a second snap and the twang of strings as Sheila’s neck broke. As more rocks crashed over him, he curled into a ball in an attempt to protect himself and his precious instrument.

  I don’t want this, Delta thought as Juliet sent telekinetic blows in his direction. He blocked and couldn’t help but respond with his own. Almost too late, his sister stepped back and raised a defense. With a cry, the blond woman trying to set up a rope flung herself at him in desperation, pulling a knife from somewhere. She slammed against his telekinetic shield, like running full tilt into a brick wall, and rebounded, stunned and with just enough consciousness to press something on her wrist. Delta felt a force shield envelop the stranger an instant before his precognition pinged.

  “Mackenzie!” screamed Juliet, her expression furious as a flurry of blows descended towards Delta, forcing him back. Juliet was always stronger than him, but he could tell she was tired. Just looking at her was enough to see that. But desperation lent her a certain strength and he found himself reaching for her mentally, to distract her, broadcasting an image from his dreams … a small circle of red carpet and the view of Juliet, tearful eyes pleading as she was carried away from the Facility.

  She recoiled as if struck and stared at him, expressive brown eyes full of shock and recognition. She’d shared a consciousness with him. She couldn’t help but recognize her brother, even though he looked nothing like the green-eyed boy she’d known.

  Her attack faltered and a twinge from his neural tech forced him to take advantage. She barely reacted fast enough, the force of his attack driving her into the wall. A part of him cringed.

  “Delta?” she said with a note of denial in her voice. “You’re alive? I thought …” Jay’s voice cracked.

  “You thought I was dead,” he croaked back, throwing scenes of waking up amidst the rubble of the Facility, the weight of Alpha’s body lying across him in the acrid darkness.

  She flinched again but maintained a strong kinetic shield this time. She pushed against his attack, stepping away from the wall. “Stop this Delta. I don’t want to fight you,” she pleaded.

  ‡I don’t either, but I must,‡ he broadcast. ‡I must get the key, I must deal with anyone who gets in my way, as I see fit. You are in my way.‡

  ‡Brother. Dee. Don’t do this.‡

  Delta flinched this time. Dee, the name she’d called him in the privacy of their own thoughts as children. The emotional overtones tore at him. Those emotions pulled when his neural tech forced him to push. He strengthened his mental shield as his face twisted in pain. He wanted to hear her projections. He wanted to feel her emotions and share his own. To once again have a little part of that closeness with her he remembered from when they were children.

  I’m sorry, Juliet, he thought in the privacy of his own mind.

  He stepped forward with tears in his violet and gold eyes. Making for the shaft, she matched him step for step, her brute force blows diverted by his skill, his attacks stopped short by her strength. They stood at the edge of the shaft, pushing like sumo wrestlers locked in a battle that was largely invisible to anyone who wasn’t psychic. Delta knew he only had to wait and deflect; she was tiring faster than him and soon he’d be able to end it.

  As they stood there, an immense wall of concussive force roared out of one of the passageways. Like flotsam in a wave, secure inside their shields of power, the concussive blast tossed them around the chamber with only one way to go.

  Down the shaft, with its glowing prize at the bottom.

  In the spinning vortex as they plummeted, Jay felt overwhelmed. As the concussive force struck at them, she instinctively dropped her mental shield to augment her telekinetic one. Her brother did the same. Emotions tore at her like a savage beast, giving her strength and wounding her all at the same time. Down they fell amidst dislodged rocks, some the size of small cars. Chunks of shattered ice from somewhere far above added a surreal ballet of light to the walls as they caught and reflected the light from beneath them.

  The walls rushed past, and in her mind, Jay felt two realities of thought collide in a landscape of fragile hopes and iron-clad order. From her memory sprang forth reflections of her family, their time on the run and hiding in plain sight. All of the vibrant scenes were colored by emotional warmth. The three of them were a family, a nucleus of love and support.

  Delta reached out and drew her memories close. She felt the tremulous touch of his mind as he experienced a measure of her time spent truly living, as if every moment he touched was a precious gem.

  Delta’s own life slammed into her like a falling comet. Behind him lay the flat, sterile world of control she only recalled from her earliest memories. Machines and scars and white-coats dominated his thoughts. Behind the cold and buried in the pain was a figure more shadow and confusion than anything else. Father. The confusion was deep; Dee didn’t know how to feel about their father beyond that he was to be obeyed in all things. Mycroft saved her brother’s life. Sheltered and protected him after he was injured. He spent little time with him and taught him a few things, but forever from behind a mental shield that brooked no emotional closeness. Sterile, like his environment.

  The two realities merged.

  Juliet winced as they each traded experiences with the other. She hadn’t shared a
true mindscape with another Gifted in a decade. The sensation overwhelmed her in many respects, and she withered under the cold crush of his experiences. She opened her mind’s eyes again to find her older brother much closer than before. The conflicting realities in their heads clashed around them within the shared mindscape as a decade of experience apart flooded across the mental landscape.

  This wasn’t just a reunion, it was a battle using memories as fodder. And she was losing.

  The tumbling chaos of rock and ice, impressive as it was, paled in comparison to the conflict raging in their minds. Lances of energy in the shapes of fears and hatreds lit the mental landscape around them. Dreams coalesced into battle tanks and robots while fears took on the personification of nightmares. Dreadful technological constructs erupted from Delta’s side of the mindscape. Juliet answered him with guerilla tactics made real from her own experiences.

  ‡Delta, I can’t let you. Please don’t do this,‡ she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‡Nor I, you,‡ he replied, throwing even more into his next barrage.

  Walls leaped from the ground to provide buffers, and walkways appeared out of whatever was nearest for them to stand on. One sterile, mechanical construct dismantled in the hands of an entire group of freed Lifers would re-form seconds later. Delta projected reflections of her friends scythed down and she brought them back to buoy her and hold back the cold tide of industrialization and order behind Delta’s white and gold-clad figure.

  What’s in his voice? I hear my brother, but it … he doesn’t feel right.

  As their struggle continued, Juliet saw more and more of her brother as his form crystallized inside the mindscape. What at first appeared to be part of his apparel, she recognized as shackles made of cabling and glowing lights, upon closer inspection. While he could move within his own draconian mental reality, that reality formed a cage as well. He wasn’t free to leave it even when he shared the mindscape of another.

  Juliet couldn’t believe it at first. She didn’t want to.

  ‡Delta, what did he do to you?‡ she pleaded as their titanic struggle continued in a place that no one but them could witness. Her voice rang clear and distinct even amidst the pockmarked hellscape they transformed their shared experience into.

  Why won’t he answer me? Wait—can he? If they did something to Delta, is he even my brother still? But he has to be! He showed me … he showed me the rug … we were there, together.

  Jay recalled the first tenuous brush of his mind in their shared space. It wasn’t the grasping, ruthless probe of an adversary.

  Resolving herself, Jay abandoned her next attack, and hidden bombs dematerialized from the area around Delta. He had always been more talented in the mindscape’s telepathy. His subtlety amazed even most of his other siblings, his thoughts mercurial and swift. Jay remembered that about him. It made his choice of attacks all the stranger. It was as if he wasn’t doing everything he possibly could. Everything was straightforward, linear. Giant robots, men in white coats, men in armor: all of it resembled a regular army of the Royals.

  Dee would never fight like this in the mindscape. He’s too quick, too smart, too subtle. But then some part of him is holding back. Somehow … is he fighting it? Hang on, brother. I’ll save you.

  Withdrawing her attacks, Jay refused to go on the offensive. Her brother did not pause. In fact, he redoubled his efforts as she withered under his mental assault.

  Exhausted from the barrage of attacks, Jay braced for an impact on the patterned stone floor that rose to meet them. In her peripheral vision, she saw Delta tense as well, but their momentum inexplicably slowed and they landed softly on the singular butte of stone. The rock and ice that fell with them continued tumbling downward, disappearing into the unending abyss surrounding the stone rise. Deflected by the same mysterious force that slowed them down, not a single pebble touched the polished floor.

  In the precise center of this perfect circle of stone was a tiny pedestal bearing strange symbols. At the tip of this stone structure was the source of the dazzling, white light, shining like the pommel stone on a sword driven into the heart of the earth. It was the size of a softball and cut with a myriad of facets that played out strange light patterns to fill the immense cavern with liquid, shimmering white light.

  Connected as they were in the mindscape, Jay felt Delta reach for the key with his telekinesis and it slipped through his grasp as if made of smoke. Both ran for the key as a hail of rock and ice continued to rain down from above and fall away into the abyss.

  Arms outstretched, a pace apart, they reached for the glowing key.

  Philippe gave a wild cry as the disco ball of doom exploded, rocking the immense ship above them and sending it to drift, as if rudderless, in the sky.

  He changed targets, aiming for blue-uniformed men looking over the side of the vessel, and pressed the trigger again. The holographic screen went red.

  “Dammit, come on!” he yelled at the controls, and a few seconds later the screen switched to green again as if the weapon had just needed a little time to recharge. He fired again, feeling a shudder through the partially wrecked vehicle as another football-sized projectile screamed towards its target.

  “It’s working! Sacks! It’s working!” Phil yelled, seeing the destruction he wrought on the side of the ship.

  “Keep going buddy,” Sacks replied as if on the verge of sleep.

  Philippe whirled around and stared in shock at his partner. Sacks’s shoulder looked like it had been shot at close range with a double-barreled shotgun. His left arm hung, motionless, drenched in blood. Although Sacks had managed to unpack a gauze strip and now applied pressure to his own wound, blood pooled under him. His gaze was confused and jerky. Philippe instantly knew his comrade was bleeding out, yet still urging him to attack the ship.

  Philippe glanced at the ship and swore, firing one last time before turning to aid his friend. As he struggled out of the pilot’s chair, a figure out of a nightmare materialized next to Sacks.

  Blurry and distorted, as if it was a ghost or an out-of-focus movie, a humanoid shape loomed beside Sacks. The air around the figure hummed like it was filled with angry bees. As Philippe opened his mouth to yell, suddenly the dark blue and gold outlined figure was in front of him, grasping his throat in a powerful grip.

  He made to grab the thing’s arm and his hand passed through it, as if the thing didn’t exist or consisted of smoke. Philippe realized in that moment, he was going to die.

  “Hey asshole.” Sacks fired the pistol they retrieved from the pilot and the weapon produced a tiny, shrieking comet of black and silver energy. But it passed harmlessly through the nightmare and impacted the roof, blowing a hole in the ceiling. Pieces of small shrapnel whistled through the air. Phil would have been thrown if he wasn’t already pressed against a bulkhead. As it was he felt peppered with hot shrapnel down his right side.

  The amorphous blob of a head turned and an instant later there was a crack. Where Sacks’s hand and the weapon used to be was now empty air and a bleeding stump of a wrist.

  Sacks screamed in agony and pressed his wrist against his chest to stem the rhythmic, red pumping. The blurred figure ignored his friend, coming more into focus, and Philippe found himself staring at the stony, blue eyes of a man.

  “How dare you fire on The Songstress,” the man said in a voice as harsh as the Canadian wind.

  Sacks was right. He does look like Captain Kirk. He shot his gaze skyward in a silent prayer to his ancestors and saw through the new hole in the roof a Hercules C-130. Was this something that would save him? Was he going to survive? Or would he end on the floor next to Sacks?

  His pulse hammered in his head. This man was going to choke him to death slowly, and his size and strength were useless. Every time he tried to grab the arm that held him, it wasn’t there.

  He looked at his friend. He’d gone quiet. Sacks was bleeding out, his face deathly pale. This being could snatch his head off in a moment.
He didn’t want to die, but if now was his time, he’d go out proud.

  “You,” Leve fought for breath, “attacked first. You’re monsters. You killed innocents. You killed my friend. We’re just, defending ourselves. So fuck you,” Phil managed to croak out.

  The man seemed to pause and the pressure on his neck eased slightly, enough that he felt like he wasn’t going to black out that second.

  “You’re a brave soldier. You know you cannot win. That I can kill you easily and yet, still you defy me. You deserve a reason before you die. So: you are aiding terrorists. Murderers and traitors. And you are not citizens of the realm.”

  “Could have, negotiated. Instead, you, attacked.” He stood on tiptoes, glancing at the Hercules in the sky as he closed his eyes to disguise looking at it.

  “You don’t negotiate with terrorists. I’ve seen your history. You’re no different. This United States of yours drops bombs after terrorists fly planes into buildings. Blunt instruments of death that fall on the innocent and guilty alike. You spout words like ‘acceptable losses’ or ‘collateral damage’ to justify your actions.”

  “I’m Canadian.”

  “And there is your problem. Little pieces of vision set by arbitrary lines on a map, with leaders elected through the power of fear, and greed. As if lines on a map mean anything. You have no central vision, no purpose. No path, and no idea the path even exists. You’re ignorant, and in your ignorance, you think your purpose is to breed and compete. Humans in groups are mobs, and mob mentality is no way to evolve. The loudest monkey in the mob and the lowest common denominator rules; and the lowest common denominator is a beast unfit to rule.”

  “God complex much? You think you’re better, fucking Nazi, deciding who lives and dies? You’re—”