Syndicate Wars_Empire Rising

by George S. Mahaffey Jr.

  The results came quickly and Cody was able to whittle down the names by certain bits of information he knew about her. In seconds he was staring at a name and an address and all of the identifying characteristics, age, prior addresses, dependents, told him that this was his Quinn.

  Just seeing her name and address stole his breath and he smiled and used his cellphone to take a picture of the address. Then he pivoted and grabbed a jacket and an old backpack before remembering one last item. It was a tiny object hidden at the back of his desk. He opened the desk and pulled out the object which was no larger than a pistol.

  It was something Cody had worked on for months in the days before. A weapon that contained an electrolytic capacitor and parts pried from an industrial camera that he hoped would be able to generate an electromagnetic pulse when the time was right.

  He stuffed the weapon into his rucksack and left the lab, hell bent on tracking Quinn down before it was too late.

  5

  This isn’t Kansas

  Quinn found Renner in a rear room lying on a stainless steel bench, his flesh the color of spoiled meat. His body was cocooned inside wires and tubes tethered to machines that beeped and blinked, an IV hooked to his good arm, a military-grade med-patch for pain stuck to his bare chest. He appeared to be sleeping as Quinn gently approached, her gaze straying to the wounded arm which was wrapped in bandages, the flesh blackened as if burned.

  She felt overwhelmed with grief as she gazed upon his injured arm. She’d done it, she’d hacked it off. But she didn’t have a choice, did she? She’d saved his life, but that did little to stifle the guilt she felt.

  She drew closer and looked down on Renner and thought he looked tiny on the bench, very small and insignificant indeed. She reached out her hand and the fingers of his good hand grabbed hers in response, his eyes slowly opening. Even though he was slipping in and out of consciousness, he mustered a faint, crooked smile.

  “There goes my drumming career,” Renner whispered, bobbing his head in the direction of his bad arm. “I’m too pretty to have a stump, Quinn.”

  “Jesus, I’m so sorry,” she whispered back, her eyes misty.

  “Don’t be. You saved my life. If the tables were turned, I would’ve done the same. Besides, did you take a look around? Pretty sure this place is all muchachas.”

  She nodded. “Lots of estrogen.”

  “Out of all of the places you could’ve brought me to,” he replied, grinning, fighting off the pain, “we could’a done a lot worse.”

  She smiled and wiped a few pebbles of sweat from his forehead which was hot to the touch. She knew a fever was raging inside him. As if sensing her concern, Renner looked up. “Am I going home, Quinn?”

  “We’re here right now...”

  “No, I mean … am I going home?” he asked again.

  “Home is where you’re with me,” she replied. He smiled and she whispered, “sleep … just sleep. You’ve earned it.”

  Quinn watched him fall asleep, then turned to see Ava standing in the doorway to the room.

  Quinn went up to her and closed the door behind them, moving with Ava to an alcove. “He’s lucky that we’ve still got a store of med-patches and morphine and two ex-nurses who know what to do with them,” Ava said.

  “You’ve had it happen before?” Quinn asked.

  “You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” Ava replied. “We know you were out on the ice. We know you saw the flashers.”

  “How do you know?”

  A ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of Ava’s mouth. “We have our ways.”

  “Can I ask the obvious?”

  Ava held up a hand, silencing Quinn. “They did it is the answer. They’re the ones who froze the planet.”

  “The aliens?”

  Ava nodded. “It sounds insane just saying it, but they found a way to take the sun away. Maybe they covered it, or blew it up. Dunno, but it’s gone now. And the thing is, none of us knew how quickly the temps were gonna drop. People got trapped outside. They were outside, then boom, all of a sudden it was fifty or sixty degrees below zero. Then it was so cold they started to freeze. Even some of our own people got trapped out there.”

  “Why would they destroy the Earth?”

  “I heard they were pissed because people kept fighting back.”

  “The resistance?”

  Ava stared quizzically at her. “Everybody. It’s like Ms. Bishop says: the only way to defeat a group that won’t surrender is extermination. To control an area that harbors resistance, you’ve got to turn it into a desert … or in our case, a freezer. The ‘net doesn’t work anymore, but one of the last things I saw was a story about all these massive battles everywhere. First it was the resistance, the insurgency, whatever you want to call it. They did not go quietly into the night, and then the others kept fighting too. Perpetual war. I guess the aliens just got tired of the whole thing.”

  “What about you?” Quinn asked.

  “What about us? We’re survivors, not fighters.”

  Before Ava could say anymore, an alarm shrieked in the distance. Ava took a step to move down a nearby hallway, then looked back at Quinn. “You’re free to move around if you want, Quinn,” she said. “I mean … where else would you go?”

  Ava trudged off down the hallway and after some hesitation, Quinn followed her. They trekked through the bottom of the building, eventually climbing a staircase that led straight up, moving past the ground floor and up two stories at least, Quinn reckoned. The staircase ended at a crude observation area, a circular space with one wall and part of the ceiling covered in glass, that appeared to be several inches thick. The window afforded an excellent view of the outside world, a shot of the city’s frozen downtown streets, the sky, and the ocean that loomed on the horizon.

  There were several dozen people gathered in the room, including most of the others Quinn had witnessed in the bullpen.

  Quinn fell into the crowd, everyone waiting, patient as a herd of cows. She stared over their shoulders, the city sparkling outside under a sheen of ice, glossy like some plastic toy just off an assembly line. The room was crowded and imbued with a kind of natural warmth, the type of positive energy often radiated by women, Quinn thought. She was a stranger, but she did not feel out of place.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Ava.

  “It’s happening,” a college-aged woman replied.

  The woman pointed up and Quinn squinted and that’s when she saw it.

  What looked like … orange snow.

  “That’s methane snow,” the woman said. “You see … different components freeze at different times which is why there are layers of colored snow.”

  Quinn cast a sideways look at her. “Different components of what?”

  “The atmosphere,” the woman replied matter-of-factly. “It’s frozen. The sun has gone away and the world with it.”

  Quinn watched multicolored snow fill the sky, a frozen rainbow falling over the city and then a series of gasps rose up from those assembled. There were what looked like immense panes of glass tumbling down through the airless sky, shattering all over the city.

  “The sky is falling,” another, older woman standing nearby said, her voice barely above a whisper. “God in Heaven, the sky is falling.”

  Quinn stared into the darkness outside, a blackness that was like the bottom of a well at midnight. The immensity of the moment sucker punched her and she turned away, trying to process everything.

  The world was indeed dead.

  By all appearances, the Syndicate had won.

  With the temperatures dropping, nothing would ever live again on the outside and there would be no more sunrises. Night eternal had come.

  “Quinn?” someone said.

  Quinn looked over to see Ava gesturing at her. She strode to Quinn and leaned into her. “Ms. Bishop would like a word with you.”

  6

  Back with Friends

  Cody lost his breath as he stood
before Quinn’s apartment building. He’d had many hours on the plane trip from Switzerland to the States and the drive from New York City to practice exactly what he was going to say, but he was still nervous. His hands shook and he soundlessly mouthed the words over and over, realizing that if he was right, Quinn and Samantha would be inside now, warm and cozy in their apartment.

  She’d told the story as many times as Samantha had, that as soon as the signal had come, Quinn went off to fight. But if this was all real, and he really had travelled back to two years before, then Quinn and Samantha would both be inside now. He glanced up as a light turned off in Quinn’s home. He’d been standing there for at least five minutes, unable to move one foot in front of the other.

  Now that there was a real possibility of saving everyone, especially Quinn and Samantha, he was frozen. Because the second he spoke with them, he’d know for sure what type of timeline and time travel he’d experienced. Then a light came on inside the apartment and hands pulled curtains back. An obscured face peered out at him. Was it Quinn? Had she recognized him? He sucked in a breath and walked up a front stoop and rang the doorbell.

  The front door to the apartment building opened. Quinn came out wrapped in a hoodie for the chilly night. Cody still couldn’t move. Quinn spoke first. “Can I help you?”

  Cody just stared at her for several uncomfortable seconds. He had so many things to say and frankly, wanted to give her a hug, but all he managed to blurt out is: “I made it back.”

  Quinn blinked. His heart sank. He could tell she didn’t recognize him. “Yeah, okay … good for you,” she replied.

  “Wait! I meant, I came back to save you, Quinn.”

  Quinn tensed. “How do you know my name?”

  “Because it’s me. Cody. I’m Cody and you’re Quinn.”

  Quinn grabbed the edge of the door, balancing her weight on her back leg. Cody had seen her do this countless times and recognized she took this posture when she was readying to throw a punch. Cody threw up his hands and summoned a smile.

  “This is going to be impossible to believe, but we’ve known each other for quite a while. We’re very close.”

  He hung his head before continuing. She wasn’t buying it. He should have walked away then, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to try.

  “I travelled back in time two and a half years. I’m a physicist at the particle collider in Switzerland. The CERN. You know CERN?”

  She nodded. That gave him hope. She was listening. He smiled, excited.

  “Okay, cool, so I work on wormholes. Well, that’s not what I mean. I’m not like a mechanic. I’m trying to prove that wormholes can be sustained for longer than a split second. Or I was trying to prove that. I did. And then the Syndicate invaded, and the world went to hell. But we fought back. You and I did. And Samantha, too. And we made it all the way onto a temporal ship and went through a wormhole to go back and try and stop the invasion. Only, somehow, I’m remembering and you’re not. So maybe we each split off into separate timelines, or we’re in individual loops. Not sure. We could still be in transit. But I need you to believe me, so we can get to safety and try to stop what’s coming. I have a plan.”

  He waited for this to sink in. Quinn’s eyes narrowed to slits. In his experience, this was not a good thing.

  “Listen, pal, I don’t know who you are or what you really want, but you need to know, I’m not some random chick living by herself.”

  “I know that, Quinn.”

  “I’m a Marine.”

  “I know that too.”

  “So then you know what Marines do, right?”

  Cody paused, then shook his head.

  “Kick the asses of creeps like you.”

  She reached out a finger and shoved him back.

  “No, please listen, Quinn…”

  She flicked a wrist. “No, you listen. Get the fuck out of here, but before you do, let this sink into your idiot skull. I will kill you if you come back.”

  He swallowed hard. “You’ve got a daughter named Samantha. I know that because I know you. You’ve got a tattoo of a daisy on your ankle and like doing this thing where you say you’re going to count to three and punch someone, but you really do it after counting two. That’s your thing.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I told you. I’m Cody. I came back to save you.”

  “I don’t know how you know all of that, but I don’t need to be saved.”

  A few seconds of silence stretched between them. Cody could tell that he wasn’t getting anywhere with her.

  “Understood. Just do me one favor.”

  Quinn stared at him silently.

  “The most powerful electrical storm to ever hit the continental United States will occur thirty-six hours before the invasion actually occurs. This was done by design. Watch the news, and I mean it—do NOT forget… and when that happens, be ready to go. You’ll have already been given your orders to deploy to Mount Taloc in South America, but that’s a misguided plan. To think that Earth could use ground forces to protect the nuclear launch sites is a gross underestimation of the threat. When you receive your deployment orders to Mount Taloc, don’t go. You hear me? Take your daughter and head for Shiloh, a place that’s located under the Francis Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. There are a series of missile silos there that can be operated on analog. It’s kind of a safe haven. Just … promise me you’ll go there when the storm hits and you get those orders.”

  Quinn exhaled a breath. She glanced off to the side like she was taking it all in.,then turned back to Cody. Her eyes bored into his. “Yeah, okay. Don’t take this the wrong way, crazy guy, but I’m going to count down from five, and if I can still see you, even your shadow, in the distance, I’ll end you.”

  Cody started to back up.

  “Five,” Quinn said.

  Cody opened his mouth, thinking of something he could say that would help connect them, such as a nickname or favorite color but his mind was blanking. He spun on his heels and stormed off, frustrated at himself. It was hopeless. Anything else he could have said would have only freaked her out. She had to see for herself. Maybe there was still a chance right before the invasion. Maybe then, she’d be more open to what he had to say.

  But it didn’t matter. His real task here wasn’t to save his relationship with her. It was to save her. He picked up his speed, faster than necessary to comply with Quinn’s command. Which almost gave him a chuckle. Even now, she was in charge. He was going faster because now he knew what he needed to do. He knew where he needed to go. And what had to be done. He had to find a way to get to Shiloh and make ready for the invasion.

  Cody drove off from Quinn’s apartment realizing he only had a finite amount of time to change the future. He motored halfway across the United States, working on a lie along the way. His cover would be that he’d been asked by the honchos in Switzerland to coordinate information and efforts with the air base in Wyoming that would be known as “Shiloh” after the alien invasion. He contacted several military officers he’d once done work for and they called in a few favors which were enough to get him past the security at the air base.

  Cody was given a laminated badge and escorted down into the silos where he met with the science officer on duty, a man named Styles, who he wowed by recounting stories of what he’d been working on at the CERN location. He was given access to an office and computer and left by himself, which is when he went to work. He locked the door to the office and sat before the computer. It took twenty minutes before he was comfortable, but then his hands moved as fast as a painter’s. He was arranging and rearranging schematics both inside a software program and tinkering with the hardware. Back and forth. Intertwined.

  He powered up an old analog laptop, positioning the screen so that he could see reports and stories on the internet. He searched various databases, but found little that would indicate anyone knew about the impending alien invasion, other than some vague reports about strange signals being pi
cked up by NASA and SETI.

  There was so much left to do, he thought to himself. Over the next several months, he began to lay the groundwork for what was to come. He developed relationships with various people, civilian and military, who began to respect his opinions on a variety of matters, including all of the work he’d done back in Switzerland on wormholes and the efficacy of time travel. Having gone back in time, he was able to impress them with his ability to predict future events, until he’d developed an underground reputation as a kind of modern day Nostradamus.

  Next, he began to offer theories on the possibility of an alien invasion and how the Earth might defend itself and fight back and people, including some in power and some in the groups that would later form the resistance, began to listen. He related what initially seemed like farfetched tales about the Syndicate armies, their weapons, their technology … their weaknesses. And then, one day, after Cody had done all he could to prepare, he saw a weather alert on his computer. A prediction about a powerful electrical storm that was predicted to strike in three days.

  They were coming, he thought to himself.

  The Syndicate was coming.

  But this time they’d be ready.

  Over the next two days, Cody breathlessly watched reports on the electrical storm, then a number of troubling reports from NASA and several other scientific elements, and finally frantic stories about aliens and invasions that were initially discounted as fake news

  That’s when the one news article that could distract him from his work caught his attention. He put everything down and stared at the screen, peering at the title of an article that said, "Invasion Imminent!" And then, another headline that read, “Marines Ordered to the Front Lines to Protect Earth’s Most Vital Counter Measures.”