by Lucas Flint
“You’re late,” I said. I gestured at Chaser’s corpse. “He’s dead. I killed him.”
Christina looked at Chaser with a mixture of confusion and surprise on her face. “That’s him? Wow.”
“You act like you haven’t see him before,” I said.
“Well, I haven’t,” said Christina. “Like I said, most Icon agents have never seen Chaser in person. Only Atticus knew what he looked like, but Atticus never described him to anyone.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I figure Chaser was just getting old and sick. His muscles probably atrophied from years of sitting in that chair bossing everyone around from this dark little room.” I shuddered. “Now that I think about it, this does seem more like a tomb than an actual computer room. Appropriate place for him to die, I think.”
Christina said nothing. She just continued to stare at Chaser with an expression I couldn’t quite understand but which I assumed was probably horror. I didn’t blame her. This was the first time she had ever seen her former boss and he was not only small, pathetic, and bony, but also dead. It made perfect sense that she would just stare at his body wordlessly. I’d likely do the same thing in her situation.
“Anyway, Uncle Josh just called me and told me that Mack and Gina set up the bomb, so we’ve got a little less than half an hour before we need to get out of here,” I said. I held up my phone again, aiming it at Chaser. “I’m just going to snap a picture of Chaser’s body that uncle can present to his boss for proof that the mission was successful and then we can get the hell out of here, because once the Gift explodes, it’s going to take all of us with it.”
Just as I got my phone’s camera set up just right, something thick wrapped around my neck from behind and yanked me back. Gasping for air, I crashed down onto the floor on my back, dropping my phone in the process. I grabbed at the rope around my neck and realized that it was one of Christina’s energy ropes, which even my strong fingers were unable to break. The energy rope tightened around my neck, making me gasp even harder for air, though there was practically no air entering my lungs.
Christina appeared above me, a wicked grin on her face. “Oh, what’s the matter, Jack? Cat got your tongue?”
“Christina …” I said, my voice strained and weak. “What … what are you doing?”
“Just completing the plan, of course,” said Christina.
Without warning, a mechanical tentacle lowered from the ceiling and attached to the Trickshot Watch. The tentacle immediately started vibrating, which sent vibrations through my arm as well, and even caused the face of the Watch to glow. I reached over to remove the tentacle, but then Christina yanked again and I gasped for air, too distracted by what Christina was doing to me to stop whatever that tentacle was doing to the Watch.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Christina in a mad voice. “You’re staying right where you are until the download is complete. I’m not going to let you go until it’s finished.”
“Download?” I said, my voice weaker than ever. “What … what download?”
Christina’s smirk became even madder. “You’re about to find out.”
Before I could ask her what she meant by that, the tentacle ceased vibrating and then disconnected itself from the Watch and curled back into the ceiling above. At the same time, Christina’s energy rope disappeared from around my neck and I sat up, coughing and hacking, trying to get as much air into my lungs as possible while Christina herself backed away very quickly, even though I hadn’t yet tried to kill her.
“Dang it,” I said, beating my chest in an attempt to get as much air through my lungs as possible. “What just happened? What did you do to the Watch?”
“We’ll find out soon,” said Christina. She didn’t sound crazy now. Just curious. “We should find out any second now whether the download worked. It should, but—”
“Again with the download,” I said. I rose to my feet, using Chaser’s chair for support. “You know what? I really don’t think I need to find out what you’re talking about. You freaking betrayed me at the last second, which I knew you were going to do, and now I’m going to break your back and leave you to die here just like your leader.”
I turned to face Christina, punching my fist into my other hand, but before I could take even one step closer to her, a voice in my head said, “I wouldn’t advise doing that if I were you, Jack. Hitting women is not a very gentlemanly—or superheroic—thing to do, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Who’s there?” I said, looking around suddenly. “And how are you talking in my head?”
“Oh, dear,” said Christina, shaking her head. “Looks like you’ve finally lost your precious marbles. I always thought you were crazy, but now you’re talking about voices in your head. Poor baby.”
I glared at Christina, but before I could respond, the voice in my head said, “I’m surprised you don’t recognize my voice, Jack. We were just speaking less than two minutes ago, after all. Is my voice really that generic? Or do you just have bad short-term memory?”
A chill went down my spine as I considered who was talking to me. “No … no, it can’t be …”
“Say my name, Jack. I know you know who I am. Delaying the inevitable won’t make the truth any less true.”
My fists shook. I didn’t want to say his name. Instead, I rushed toward Christina, aiming a punch for her head, hoping to take her out with one solid blow so Uncle Josh and I could escape the Tower before it blew up.
But as my fist flew through the air toward Christina, my costume turned back into energy and went back into the Watch. As a result, I was back in my street clothes and my fist was back to its normal strength.
As a result, Christina caught my fist and twisted my arm, making me cry in pain before she swept my legs out from underneath me and sent me falling to the floor. She then pinned me down with one of her feet and knelt down toward me, an amused smirk on her face.
“What happened to all of that super strength you just had, kid?” said Christina. “Did you misplace it? You didn’t seem very forgetful to me, but then again, you don’t seem particularly smart, either.”
I didn’t respond, because at that moment, a blue light flashed into existence beside both of us. It was a hologram, very much like TW, but unlike TW, the hologram looked nothing like Grandfather. It resembled a wire frame figure, humanoid in shape but no actual human features save for two red dots on his face which acted as eyes. The figure flexed his holographic muscles for a moment before looking down at me.
“This is … wonderful, Jack,” said the holographic figure. “Much better than my old, frail physical body. I feel like I can run a marathon again, like how I could in my youth. And it’s all thanks to you.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the hologram who stood above me like a god. “Chaser.”
The holographic figure tilted his head to the side. “I am so glad you identified me, because I was worried for a moment there that you might have forgotten about me already. Luckily for us, however, your memory is still in proper working order. I just wanted to thank you, because of your efforts, I will now live forever. And it’s all thanks to you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I looked from Christina to Chaser and back again, unable—unwilling, actually—to believe my eyes. “What just happened? I killed you. You should be dead.”
“Oh, I am,” said Chaser. He looked over at his physical corpse with obvious distaste. “Or my old body is, anyway. It was on its last legs, supported only by far too many surgeries and medicines that only put off the inevitable. And I would have died with it, if you hadn’t come here bringing the Trickshot Watch with you. For that, I must thank you. I know I’ve already thanked you many times already, but I am a firm believer in thanking the people who help you, especially in matters as important as this.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty amazing,” said Christina, though I noticed that she didn’t look exactly comfortable in Chaser’s presence. “I didn’t think your plan would work when you first explained i
t to me, but I guess I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“Of course,” said Chaser. “It’s what I always tell the others. Never doubt me, never question me, never even consider doing either. Accept my plans, even if they don’t make sense to you, because they will always work out in the end, no matter how strange or even nonsensical they may seem in the beginning.”
“I’ve definitely learned my lesson there,” said Christina.
“Anyone mind explaining to me what is going on?” I said. I glanced at the Trickshot Watch. “How did you get into the Watch when I just killed you?”
“I’m not physically in the Watch myself,” said Chaser, looking down at me again. “It’s my consciousness, which was downloaded into my computers, where it awaited the day you would come to Iconia with the Watch so it could be downloaded into it like a computer program.”
“But how do you remember me if that’s what happened?” I said. “I didn’t see that weird tentacle thing attached to the back of your head or whatever.”
“I had a computer chip implanted into the back of my skull a few years ago to wireless copy my memories and consciousness into my computers twenty-four seven,” said Chaser. “That way, my computers would have the most up-to-date version of me, no matter when I got the Watch. That is also why I never left my room, because I needed to be as close to my computers as possible in order to make sure my backups were always up to date.”
“But … how is any of this even possible?” I said. “Humans can’t transfer their consciousness into machines. That’s just science fiction.”
Chaser tilted his head to the side. “Given everything you’ve seen Icon can do, why do you find it so hard to believe that our scientists—who compose some of modern humanity’s greatest thinkers and minds—couldn’t find some way to transfer human consciousness into computers? It’s something my scientists have been working on for the last ten years or so and it’s only been recently that the tech has been perfected. Truly, technology is amazing.”
“Is … is this your great master plan, then?” I said. “Transferring your consciousness into the Trickshot Watch?”
“But of course,” said Chaser. He nodded at his corpse. “You saw how pathetic my body was. I knew that I was going to die sometime soon, but I didn’t want to die, because I want to stay alive forever. And I am pleased to say that it appears that immortality is now fully within my grasp.”
“Why?” I said. “Why would you want to live forever?”
Chaser folded his arms across his chest. “You see my old body, don’t you? It didn’t become that way strictly because of old age and lack of exercise. About ten years ago, I came down with an incurable disease that, my best scientists informed me, would kill me in a decade or so if I didn’t find some way to cure it. Of course, as I just said, the disease was incurable, though that didn’t stop me from scouring the world’s medical literature at the time for any possible cure to it.”
Then Chaser unfolded his arms and put his hands on his waist. “But, as you might guess, I failed to find a cure. I was forced to confront the very real possibility that I might die, rotting away due to the incurable disease I had contracted. If that happened, I would not be able to lead Icon, and because I hadn’t yet designated a successor, I feared that Icon would go astray without me to lead it. As much as I trust Atticus, I didn’t trust him then—and still don’t trust him now—to succeed me as the Superior.”
A flash of understanding appeared in Christina’s eyes just then. Maybe she had been wondering about that and was now satisfied that Chaser had answered her question. Or maybe she was surprised at how frankly Chaser spoke about the inadequacy of his second-in-command. Either way, I ignored Christina, because right now she was not the biggest threat.
“That was when I read an experiment done by some Chinese scientists who were trying to discover the secrets of consciousness,” said Chaser. “They attempted to transfer the consciousness of a man dying of cancer into a computer specially designed for that exact purpose. The experiment almost worked, though the machine was unable to hold the man’s consciousness and it exploded, which killed most of the scientists save for one. I recruited that surviving scientist into Icon after I paid his medical bills he incurred while staying in the hospital. I put him to work, along with a team of our own scientists, to perfect the process of transferring human consciousness into machinery.”
“Must have worked, then,” I said. “Given, well, you know.”
Chaser nodded. He ran his hands down his holographic body. “It worked fabulously, even better than I expected. But there was just one problem: The scientist informed me that current technology would not be powerful enough to hold my vast, complicated consciousness. He told me I would need to find something extremely powerful in order to house my data for long periods of time. I did, of course, have him and his team design a series of servers for that purpose, but I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity in servers. I wanted the freedom and mobility I had as a physical human being, but with the immortality of a computer program.”
“How did you get around that?” I said.
Chaser pointed at the Trickshot Watch. “The answer is on your wrist. I realized that the Trickshot Watch was a piece of alien technology. I vaguely recalled reading notes that the earliest Icon scientists had written on it, including one which theorized that the Watch’s memory capabilities were so vast that they could hold an entire human being’s consciousness inside them if you somehow managed to upload it in there. I remembered that Gregory had told me he had modified the Watch to have an AI assistant that was very human-like in its capabilities, which was all the confirmation I needed that the transfer would be possible.”
“So that’s why you captured Grandfather and brought him back to Iconia as a prisoner,” I said. “Because you wanted to put your consciousness into the Trickshot Watch.”
“Bingo,” said Chaser, nodding. “Gregory knew that as well, but even though he considered me a friend, he didn’t agree with it. That’s why we had to capture him, rather than invite him, because he wouldn’t have come back of his own free will. Luckily, my agents managed to take him by surprise and drag him back to Iconia against his will.”
“So what took you so long to actually do the transfer?” I said. “If you had the Trickshot Watch for ten years, why wait so long?”
“Because the technology wasn’t ready yet,” said Chaser. “The technology to transfer human consciousness into a machine was still far from perfect. I just wanted to make sure I had the Watch on hand for the inevitable day when the machine would be perfected. That day came almost four months ago now, but then … well, you know what happened next.”
I nodded. “Grandfather sent me the Trickshot Watch.”
“Somehow,” said Chaser. He shook his head. “To this day, I still don’t know how he did it. He had no friends or allies in Icon who would be willing to help him. He didn’t have any powers that he could use to do it himself. And yet, somehow, he did it. It was … frustrating, as you might imagine.”
I couldn’t help but smirk. It was nice to hear Chaser sound so annoyed at Grandfather outsmarting him. I didn’t know how he did it, either, but I still felt satisfied hearing him say that anyway. “That’s Grandfather for you. He always finds a way to do what he wants.”
“Yes, Gregory had an annoying habit of doing that,” said Chaser. “But no matter. The Trickshot Watch being in your possession was but a minor speed bump on my plans to immortality. As of a few minutes ago, I have now passed the speed bump and achieved my goals and dreams. I will now live forever as an immortal being, as close to a god as a human can possibly become.”
Then Chaser gestured at Christina. “Of course, I couldn’t have done it without Christina’s help here. If she hadn’t lured you to Iconia, then this entire plan wouldn’t have worked. It’s thanks in no small part to her efforts that I was able to let myself get killed and then transfer my mind into the Watch.”
“It was ac
tually pretty easy,” Christina said. “The kid here isn’t as smart as he likes to think he is. Nor were those Pinnacle agents, for that matter. I have to admit, though, that I literally thought I would die a few times during the mission.”
“Sorry about that,” said Chaser. “I needed to make sure that neither Jack nor the Pinnacle agents even suspected that they were walking into a trap. Also, I didn’t let the other Icon agents know about our plan. Only you and I were in on it or even aware that there was a plan at all. Even Atticus, bless his heart, didn’t know that your betrayal wasn’t genuine, which is why he was confused at my nonchalance when he first reported your betrayal to me.”
Christina’s mouth dropped open. “You mean Scourge, Black Ghost, and Benjamin were trying to kill me for real?”
“Of course,” said Chaser. “If the other Icon agents had known about our plan, they would have ruined it by not going all out against you. By keeping them in the dark about the true nature of your ‘betrayal,’ it made the entire performance that much more realistic.”
“But …” I thought back to everything we had been through tonight. “All of those guys are dead. We killed several of your best agents.”
“So?” said Chaser. “I was aware that you might kill a few of my agents if I went through with the plan, but it was a price I was willing to pay for immortality. All Icon agents exist to serve me. Every agent you killed tonight would have happily sacrificed themselves at my orders. Their deaths aren’t really that tragic.”
The cold way Chaser spoke of his dead agents was disturbing. Even Christina looked a little put off by Chaser’s tone, though she was probably still processing the fact that only she and Chaser had been aware of the plan and that she had nearly been murdered by some of her fellow coworkers over the last several hours. That must have been a terrible realization to have, but frankly I didn’t have too much sympathy for her, given how Christina had just betrayed me for real.
“It was my most audacious plan yet,” said Chaser. He looked up at the ceiling, like he was staring at the sky above. “But it worked almost flawlessly. Now I am immortal and no one can stop me. Or my army.”
