Final Empire

by Blake Northcott

  I stood in silence for just a moment, contemplating the damage I could cause with just a few simple words. I knew they had to be said. I knew she had to hear them. But telling her what was inside of that box was a wrecking ball that could destroy everything we’d built together, smashing it down to the foundation. When she heard what I had to say the bricks would start crumbling, and I didn’t know if there would be anything left.

  “Look,” she said, her tone softening, “I let you set the pace right from the get-go because I knew you had issues. That you were bad with…well, everything human-related. I didn’t go into this blind.” Her hands flattened against my chest, eyes welling with sadness. “Your heart needs to open up, Matty. You need to let me in at some point, or I need to be with someone who will.”

  I swallowed hard and cleared my throat. I was preparing to say something but the words never came.

  She shook her head in disappointment and turned to leave when I snatched her by the wrist.

  “It’s my future,” I whispered, my voice suddenly trembling.

  “Your…” She brushed a wave of pink hair from her face, eyes half closed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been drinking a lot…you’re gonna have to use a couple more words to describe what you’re talking about.”

  I reached into the pocket of my jeans and produced a key card. It wasn’t the clear translucent cards that everyone had been assigned here in the fortress, used to access the main entrances and their chamber doors. It was blue and opaque, with an angular white logo emblazoned across it.

  “What does that open?” Peyton asked, though I’m sure she already knew the answer.

  “Come with me,” I said softly. “I’ll show you.”

  The elevator opened to the basement level, giving way to a network of concrete halls lined with metallic yellow doors, each one leading to a different department. Peyton followed in silence as we navigated through the dimly lit corridors. With a swipe of my card I accessed a secure laboratory which had recently been cleaned out; chairs, tables and workstations had all been removed, leaving the space bare. Sitting mid-room was an eight-foot silver casket. My box.

  “Should I keep a safe distance?” Peyton asked, her eyes cautiously trailing along its smooth metallic surface.

  I shook my head. “I already told you what’s inside.” I pressed the opaque blue card to the front of the device and it hissed open, frigid air rushing from the seams as it revealed its contents. When the door swung open and the interior lights burst on, Peyton realized that I’d been telling her the truth all along. It was empty. At least for the time being.

  Peyton arched her eyebrows, staring into the box with anticipation. She continued to wait, possibly expecting something to appear, like an assistant in a magic show. “Okay, well that was a big build-up that led to absolutely nothing.”

  “What were you expecting?” I asked.

  “A weapon? Or maybe a manticore. Or a secret magical amulet. I don’t know – anything but a fancy refrigerator.”

  She stepped towards the box and reached out towards it.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I said quickly, waving her off. “It’s not calibrated yet, you could get frostbite.”

  She jerked her hand back. “Just from touching it?”

  “It’s designed to get down to a hundred and fifty degrees below Celsius.”

  Careful not to make physical contact with the container, she leaned in and squinted at some writing along the inside seam, etched below the old Frost Corporation logo. It was a single word that explained exactly what the box was, what I was doing with it, and what I’d been lying to her about for way, way too long.

  Cryogenics.

  She spun back towards me. “It’s still there, isn’t it?” She studied me, as if peering through my eyes and directly into my brain.

  I nodded slowly.

  “You lied,” she said, her words brittle with pain. “You said you had the operation. You said it worked.”

  “No, no, no,” I was quick to correct her, “It was gone – at least mostly. The nanotech procedure got most of it, but a little piece was embedded too deeply, and…”

  “Here we are.”

  I nodded again. “Here we are.”

  “And this,” she said, throwing a hand towards the box, “this is all your ten zillion IQ could come up with? Becoming a popsicle – until when? How long are you planning to go into this thing?”

  I scratched at the back of my head, eyes glued to the floor. “Technically my IQ is only two-hundred and twenty. It’s actually impossible to score anything above a—”

  “HOW LONG?” Her palm slammed into my chest.

  “As long as it takes,” I fired back. “As long as it takes for the lab coats to come up with a cure for this. Ten years, maybe twelve.” The pain in Peyton’s eyes gave way to chest-tightening panic so I softened my tone. “But science is progressing so fast,” I assured her, reaching for her shoulders. “You never know – it could be as soon as eight years…or less! And by that time you’ll still be younger than me, so…”

  “I’m glad you’ve taken the time to figure all of this out,” she whispered, her voice thick and hoarse. “To consider all of the details. By yourself.”

  And then I cried. I sat on the ground like a wounded child in a playground, buried my hands in my palms and wept. It was almost a minute before I was composed enough to speak. “Everyone assumes I have all the answers…I – I just don’t. If you think I want this…if you think I want to leave you here while I’m locked in a freezer…”

  She knelt before me and leaned in, gentle fingers kneading the back of my neck, tilting her forehead against mine. “I just wish you’d trusted me enough to say all of this a year ago. That’s all I’ve ever wanted: to be let in. Not all at once, but gradually, inch by inch I wanted you to open the door. Just a crack.”

  “It not about letting you in…it’s always been about protecting you.”

  She laced her fingers into the hair at the base of my scalp. “And how many times have I told you that I don’t need your protection, Matty? I’m a big girl – I can take care of myself. Just have a little faith in me once in a while. The same faith I always put in you.”

  When I craned my neck upwards our eyes met, and she wiped my tear-stained cheeks with her thumbs.

  “I trust you, Matty. All the way. If you say this cryogenics thing is the only way to go – to freeze your tumor until one of your scientists can cure it – then I say do it.”

  I gazed at her with red-rimmed eyes, nearly choking on my words. “I – I don’t know what to say, but…this isn’t going to be easy.”

  She smiled, bravely fighting back tears of her own. “Life never is.”

  She threw her arms around my neck and we remained on the floor, intertwined, for longer than I can remember. I wanted it to remain like this. Peyton and I, our hearts beating rhythmically, my face buried in the nape of her neck, breathing her in…I wanted this fleeting moment to be frozen in time, locked into my failing memory forever. When I would eventually step into the cryogenics chamber having said all my final goodbyes, I wanted this exact sensation to be burned into my consciousness. As long as I remained in stasis, I’d never need another thought to comfort me.

  She drew back until her lips brushed my ear. “How much more time do I have with you…” she breathed. “I mean, before you need to…I don’t even know what to call it.”

  “It’s okay to say the word,” I reassured her. “I’ll be frozen.”

  She bit down on her lip. “I hate the thought of that. You, ice cold, in the dark…and what if they can’t even bring you back? When it’s time to wake you, what if something goes wrong, and—”

  “Hey,” I cupped her cheek in my hand, “it’s all right.”

  I explained that my freezing needed to be scheduled a lot sooner than later. My medication, designed to keep the tumor’s expansion at bay, had been faltering. No, I haven’t been experiencing full-blown hallucinations – no unicorn rides across the
ethereal plane or fist fights with flying spaghetti monsters, but in London I’d heard a voice in my head; speaking to me, reassuring me – a voice that didn’t exist outside of my subconscious. That’s when I knew that the ticking time bomb embedded inside of my skull was poised to detonate a lot sooner than I’d anticipated.

  I also assured Peyton than the science was sound, though I completely understood her skepticism. Cryogenics had been nothing more than a farce dating back to the 1960s, where the wealthiest in society could roll the dice and make Pascal’s Wager by stepping into the freezer. Oftentimes, the less-than-pious among us suddenly decide that they’ve ‘found God’ when they’re faced with a trip to the afterlife. Because after all, what’s the harm? If there’s no such thing as Heaven and Jesus and all the celestial perks that are apparently awarded for devout belief, then nothing is lost. But in the off-chance that you do happen to find yourself standing at the Pearly Gates, it’s preferable to have a solid track record of worship on your pre-mortem resume. Or so I’ve read. Taking a leap of faith with cryogenics had always been much the same: there were no assurances that a client could be successfully thawed without significant damage to their brain tissue. It was assumed, by the greatest minds of the time, that the technology would eventually be developed decades down the line – but making that assumption was a leap of faith in itself. It was risky, but with time running short and a bank account filled with cash they’d never spend, the privileged had nothing to lose by taking a chance.

  With my current technology, being revived was all but assured. The next-gen cryogenics tube was a prototype – a one-of-a-kind unit that had been in development for over a decade. Back when Cameron Frost suffered the boating accident that left him paralyzed, he’d invested billions to ensure he’d walk once again. Robotics was the first step, which the world saw on display during Arena Mode. He’d also invested heavily in cybernetic implants, and harvesting stem cells from both humans and superhumans alike, in the hopes that something would give him back his legs. Nothing worked. Frost was by no means elderly, but at middle-age he began thinking about the future, and how many good years remained while he sat prone in a chair. He covertly spent hundreds of millions more on the development of a cryogenics chamber that actually worked; a cooling system that would leave the brain in perfect stasis, unaffected by temperatures that could damage neurons and synapses beyond repair.

  I walked Peyton to the back of the box and snapped open a long panel. It revealed a pair of shimmering violet crystals as long as my leg, bolted into the freezer like giant double-A batteries in an old television remote.

  “These were found at one of Frost’s excavation sites in Morocco,” I explained. “They’re naturally occurring and extremely rare – scientists don’t even have a name for them yet. But when they’re exposed to heat, they protect themselves by giving off a freezing mist.”

  “So you’ll wake up, no problem?”

  “A golden retriever was in this chamber for eight months, two weeks and four days. Woke up, wagged her tail and went looking for her favorite tennis ball like she’d just woken from a nap.”

  “Huh.”

  “Like I said, one of a kind. Only a dozen people even know this thing exists. It can’t be replicated – at least, until more of these crystals are found. And it took a couple of hundred years to find these two, so who knows when that’ll be.”

  “I’ll be here when you wake up,” she promised. “No matter how long you need to be inside, I’ll be waiting for you.”

  And I believed her.

  The next couple weeks were harder than I’d anticipated.

  A week before Christmas I flew to Canada to visit my three remaining family members: my older sister, my hyperactive five-year-old nephew Austin, and my precocious seven-year-old niece Addison. We embraced, we laughed, we shed a few tears. It was overwhelming, but also cathartic.

  Elizabeth worried (as she always did) that I was making the wrong decision. I assured her it was the only one I had left. She was more of a mother to me than my biological mother ever had been, and she never stopped treating me like her baby brother – emphasis on the ‘baby’. I used to think it was irritating. Now, in a strange way, I almost craved it.

  It would be difficult for everyone, but I had no alternatives. I wanted to spend more time with Elizabeth; to have her shout at me for not eating healthy enough, or for going outside in the snow without my coat on. I wanted to teach Addison how to shoot a three-pointer and finally crush Austin at Mario Kart Universe (a feat I’d yet to accomplish…how he got so skilled at VR motion control by the age of five, I’d never know). I wanted to watch them sing in choirs, dance ballet, learn how to snowboard. I wanted to see them grow. Now I’d have to experience all of those things through videos and photographs. Just a few short years ago I’d held the little munchkins while they were tightly swaddled in pastel-colored blankets, sucking pacifiers…by the time I’d emerge from cryogenics, they’d be thinking about which universities to apply to. Being an uncle to these kids was such an honor, such a privilege. Missing these years with them was something I’d never get back, and it crushed a little part of me.

  Elizabeth asked if I should contact mom and tell her about my tumor, as well as my upcoming cryogenic treatment. She was still in the wind, off the grid. We hadn’t heard from her for longer than either of us could remember, and at this point, she’d pretty much relinquished her rights to even be called ‘family’ to any of us. I had the resources to locate her if I’d really wanted to, but she clearly didn’t want to be found, so who was I to go against her wishes? When I went into stasis, she could hear about it on the simulcasts along with everyone else.

  After giving Austin and Addison several hundred gifts, and spoiling them beyond all reason, I said my tearful goodbyes and returned to Fortress 18 for New Years.

  Seven days remaining until stasis.

  Peyton and I spent a quiet night in our room with champagne and chocolate covered strawberries, blissfully watching a simulcast of the fireworks erupt over Sydney – the first major city to celebrate the New Year. The neon multi-colored explosions were cut through by a call on my com. It was Detective Dzobiak.

  I stepped into the hall and pulled open a holoscreen. “What’s up, partner?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, gritting his teeth with agitation. “Your boy Kenneth is still running loose. And now he’s adding to his body count.”

  It had been six weeks since the senator’s daughter had washed up on the shore of Kenneth’s island, and he’d all but threatened an attack on any American who’d dare step foot near his self-proclaimed land. It didn’t seem like something that the government would let slide. But here we were, with not a single word of new information being uttered on the news about the incident, and Kenneth staying conspicuously silent.

  “He…killed someone?” I asked. “How do you know this?”

  “Because I saw it.” Dzobiak swiped a file from his wrist-com and it instantly appeared on mine, blinking, awaiting my command. “And now you’re about to see it.”

  I opened the video file. A night-vision satellite image showed a streak of light burst into a building (somewhere in Rural China, judging by the topography) and several bodies being sliced in half. It was as if someone had chucked a six-foot, heat-seeking buzzsaw through a window, directly into a crowded room. It all happened in a blink. The victims were in pieces before they could react.

  “That attack looked a lot like when Kenneth took out Darmaki,” I noted. Suspicious, yes, but hardly conclusive. That streak could’ve been someone, or something else – I didn’t have any evidence it was Kenneth.

  “Believe me, it’s your boy all right,” the detective grumbled. “He took out a man named Jian Zhou – but his followers called him ‘The Life Bringer’. This ancient dude could bring dead matter back to life, according to reports. He’d revive farm animals, turn dead crops into food for thousands – this guy could do it all. Except bring himself back to life, apparently.
”

  The second video the detective sent me was a recording from a US satellite tracking system, which saw the streak blasting southward. The cameras lost track of the target not long after it passed over Hong Kong, but whatever the buzzsaw was that killed those people, it was most definitely heading in the direction of the Desolation Islands. Kenneth’s Island. Occam’s Razor.

  “All right,” I sighed, massaging my forehead, “so Kenneth probably killed this superhuman in China. That sucks, but I’m not a cop, man. I’ve got my own shit to deal with here.”

  “I know you’re stepping into the freezer next week, but I could really use your help on this one, Mox.”

  “Help with what? What could I possibly do that the entire US government can’t?”

  “It’s not a matter of ‘can’t’,” he said in a hushed tone, as if someone were listening in. “It’s a matter of ‘won’t’. The senator’s daughter was scooped up by some French nationals, shipped stateside and buried. End of story. The media shut up about it, and no one else moved a muscle. Doesn’t that seem a little strange to you?”

  “Hmm…” It did seem suspicious that what seemed like an act of war had suddenly been downgraded to a routine homicide. Though technically it was possible that America’s resources were being spread too thin; even with a military that eclipsed thirty of the largest armies on the planet combined, they could only do so much, and be in so many places at once. At the time, the US was involved in six separate occupations throughout Africa and Asia with no sign of withdrawing from any of them. A senator’s dead daughter was tragic, but possibly not a priority given the world’s political climate.

  “This video should change everything,” I suggested. “The Living Eye going on a killing spree? They won’t let this stand, especially if he’s linked to the senator’s daughter. Send your findings to the powers that be, and they’ll have no choice but to do something about it.”