The Last Stand (The Forever Gate Book 9)

by Isaac Hooke

  It did not.

  Instead, Amoch’s robe appeared on the opposite periphery of her vision. He stood beside Tanner.

  “Thank you for showing up, Tanner. Your presence gives me a wonderful idea. How ironic it would be if you were the one who killed Ari.”

  Amoch stepped into Tanner’s avatar. The black robes passed right through his body, so that in a moment only Tanner stood there.

  Tanner lowered his bow, no longer frozen. “Why hello there.” He lifted Ari, repositioning her so that she was facing him. He smirked. “That’s better. Wouldn’t want you to have to observe your own death from the periphery of your vision.”

  Tanner withdrew his fire sword.

  “Fight him, Tanner!” Ari said.

  “Don’t you understand?” he said. “Tanner is gone. Just like when One overwrote Jeremy’s avatar, I have overwritten Tanner’s. He is seeing and hearing everything that I am, but is powerless to respond in any way. A prisoner in his own body.”

  At the corner of her eye, Ari spotted a group of refugees trying to flee across the street below.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Tanner spun toward them and unleashed flames from the blade. The refugees transformed into burning, charred masses on the cobblestone.

  “Please,” Ari said.

  An arrow struck Tanner’s chest. It was an ordinary arrow, thankfully, and not an explosive one. Tanner staggered, and then pivoted toward the source of the arrow.

  Ari spotted a survivor from the Black Den ducking from view behind a curtain across the street. Tanner must have seen it, too, because he unleashed a terrible stream of flame from his sword, turning the second-story room into a conflagration. A man fell outside, burning.

  Tanner broke the arrow from his chest and turned toward her.

  “Fight it, Tanner,” Ari said.

  Tanner snarled.

  His expression suddenly softened and Ari was set free of the invisible binds. Unready, she collapsed.

  “It’s me!” Tanner said as she scrambled upright. “The arrow has weakened him. Quickly, kill me!”

  “Tanner, I can’t.”

  “Do it now!” Tanner said. “I can only hold him at bay a moment longer!”

  Tears streaming down her face, Ari withdrew her sword and plunged it into Tanner’s chest.

  The love of her life gasped in disbelief and fell to his knees.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Tanner vanished. In his place knelt Amoch, the broken arrow protruding from his robes alongside the sword hilt. His face was no longer sheathed in darkness.

  Kade looked up at her and smiled. “Didn’t... think... you had it in you.”

  He crumpled, rolling off the rooftop, landing dead in the street below.

  She retrieved the handmirror from her belt and began the process of disbelieving reality, hoping the code change that trapped her on the Inside had been removed as Tanner promised, and that Kade’s teleportation shield didn’t reach the rooftop.

  Please don’t be dead, Tanner.

  thirteen

  Hoodwink gazed at the hordes of robot squids that blocked the forward direction, then glanced at a similar swarm that approached from the breached seal in the side bulkhead.

  “Retreat!” he shouted.

  They carried the bomb backward through the passage, putting several paces between themselves and the enemy.

  Hoodwink called a halt. “This is good enough. At least here we only have to defend in the forward direction, rather than both the front and side.”

  “Wait, why are we stopping?” Zak said.

  “We have to plant the bomb,” Hoodwink told him. “We can advance no further. The robots will eventually overrun us if we continue the retreat.”

  “But if we plant the nuke here,” Zak said. “Will we destroy the ship entirely?”

  “No,” Hoodwink admitted. “But it will disable them. Perhaps permanently. We won’t have to worry about the Satori for a very long time to come.”

  Hoodwink tossed the rifle to Zak. “Cover Myerson and me while we arm the weapon!”

  Hoodwink and Myerson activated the mounting magnets and secured the nuke to the deck.

  “I’m setting the timer to thirty minutes,” Hoodwink transmitted. “It’ll be close, but the rest of you should be able to make it out.”

  Hoodwink armed the weapon and the countdown began.

  30:00.

  29:59.

  29:58.

  “I’ll stay and guard the bomb,” he told Zak. “Give me the rifle.”

  “You’re going to stay alone?” Zak said.

  “I am.”

  Zak shook his head. “Klay and I are having enough trouble keeping these squids at bay between the two of us.”

  Hoodwink saw that they weren’t lying. For every robot the pair incinerated, another took its place almost instantly. If Hoodwink stayed alone, he would very quickly be overwhelmed.

  “Go, Hoodwink!” Zak said. “We’ll cover the two of you. Myerson, go with him!”

  “Gladly!” Myerson said. “Thank you, Zak. Klay. I won’t forget this. Hoodwink, let’s go!”

  “No,” Hoodwink said. “I won’t be one of those who runs. I stay. Zak, give me your weapon.” Zak didn’t respond. “Fine. Klay, give me the rifle.”

  “Don’t do it, Klay!” Zak said. “Hoodwink is too valuable to humanity. His knowledge about the aliens is irreplaceable. We can’t allow him to die. Plus he’s humanity’s only ally: the only one who will protect us if they ever return. I’m sorry Hoodwink, you have to go.”

  “You don’t understand,” Hoodwink said. “When I die, I will merely return to my alien body. So I won’t be dead, not really.”

  “But you won’t be able to communicate with us,” Zak insisted. “Not when you’re in alien form.”

  “That is true, it is,” Hoodwink agreed. “But I will simply return to Earth and find another human body.”

  Zak seemed about to give in.

  But then Klay spoke up: “What about your flyer? It’s too close. When the nuke explodes, the compressed gases will travel through the corridors we’ve unsealed, explosively venting to the outside. Your flyer will be destroyed in the shockwave, along with your Satori body.”

  “Come on Hoodwink, go!” Zak said over the comm. “You’re wasting precious time!”

  “Give me a moment,” Hoodwink said. “I’ll return to my alien body and move my flyer out of the way, and then I’ll come back to defend the bomb.”

  “There isn’t time,” Zak said.

  “Make time. Decide between the two of you who will stay.”

  Hoodwink thought the code word and that reality vanished.

  GRAOL ASSUMED CONTROL of his flyer and piloted the craft well away from the large blast crater, taking care not to place the vessel in the path of any other Satori point defenses.

  He moored himself to the consciousness transference unit and initiated the process that would return him to his surrogate body.

  It didn’t work.

  It was one thing to connect to the surrogate using the powerful transmitters found aboard something like the mothership, but to do so from the flyer with its relatively weak EM generators was another entirely. He was simply too far from his human body.

  He repositioned the flyer back inside the crater, returning the craft to its previous orbit. There was nothing for it, then. When the nuke exploded his human body would die and the shockwave from the resulting expanding gases would destroy his flyer, too, along with his real body. Graol’s end had come.

  He quickly programmed the autopilot to perform a hard banking maneuver upon his awakening. It was doubtful the ship would respond in time, as his consciousness would likely arrive the same moment as the blast wave, but he would be remiss for not trying.

  He planned to lie to Zak and the others, of course.

  Let them think I will live.

  HOODWINK OPENED HIS eyes. He was strapped to someone’s back. He couldn’t move. The overhead floated past abov
e him.

  “What—” Hoodwink struggled against the invisible binds that held him. He tried the squad line. “What the hell is going on?”

  “You’re back, then,” Myerson said as he vented propellant, changing directions to ascend a vertical shaft.

  “Where’s Zak? Klay?”

  “I’m sorry, Hoodwink,” Myerson said. “We weren’t sure we could trust you. So we installed a failsafe in your suit.”

  Hoodwink couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “A what?”

  “A failsafe. We locked your exoskeleton. You can’t move.”

  Hoodwink tried the override controls on the helmet aReal but they didn’t work.

  “I didn’t authorize this!” Hoodwink said.

  “I know,” Myerson returned. “Zak and Klay thought it was for the best.”

  Hoodwink struggled against the exoskeleton, but the unit held him tight. He tried the squad line again, hoping that Zak and Klay were still in range.

  “Zak, don’t do this goddammit! You don’t have to die!”

  “They can’t hear you, Hoodwink.”

  Hoodwink struggled one final time and then deactivated the comm to let out a long shout of frustration. Out of all of them, he had wanted Zak to live the most. Zak, the youngest of them all, who had emerged from the Inside only recently. It was far too soon for his life to end.

  “I have a message for you from Zak,” Myerson said. “Would you like me to play it?”

  “Yes,” Hoodwink said, unable to conceal the emotion from his voice.

  “I’m sorry, Hood,” Zak’s voice came over the helmet speakers. “There wasn’t any more time. Good luck. I hope you make it out. If you do, say hi to Ari for me. And if you ever see my sister again, tell her I love her.”

  The moments passed in a blur of tears, and then before he knew it Myerson hauled him out into the blast crater and loaded him aboard one of the waiting shuttles.

  Myerson strapped the immobilized Hoodwink into the cargo area and sat down in the cockpit.

  “Will your flyer follow us?” Myerson asked as the shuttle left the surface.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Hoodwink?”

  “Yes,” he finally said in defeat.

  He piped the ventral camera feed into his aReal and watched the blast crater diminish below him. Hoodwink’s flyer kept pace with the shuttle.

  When the blast crater was the size of a fist, the bomb detonated. Superheated gases vented from the crater.

  The mothership split open.

  The escaping ocean water misted, boiling away and desublimating. But Hoodwink hardly saw for the conflicting emotions he felt. Victory. Defeat. Joy. Mourning.

  Forgive me, my people, for doing this.

  And forgive me, Zak, Klay, Raynor and Clark.

  fourteen

  Ari opened her eyes in the real world. The Children had indeed fixed her avatar, and Kade’s shield hadn’t reached her location on the rooftop.

  She was still in the relearning center. It was crowded. Her body had been moved to one corner, and an intravenous feed connected her to a total parenteral drip.

  Flinching, she slid the needle from her arm, and then opened a first aid kit on the floor nearby to wrap the wound in gauze. She reached under the blue patient gown she had been given and, after convincing herself that no one was watching her, she removed the excretion collection tubes from her lower body. When that embarrassing task was done, she struggled to her feet and blinked the sudden phosphene fireworks from her vision.

  “Ari!” Caylin had been seated nearby, probably playing some game on her aReal, but she rushed over to give her a hug.

  “Not now, Caylin.” Feeling weak, Ari forced her way through the crowded compartment until she reached the exit hatch.

  “Where are you going?” Caylin asked. Apparently the little girl had followed her.

  “I have to find Tanner,” Ari said. “Is it safe out there?”

  “The robots are gone,” Caylin told her.

  That was all Ari needed to know. “Stay here.”

  She entered her code and raced out into the steel halls. It took her five minutes to navigate the passages and trunks to the deck she sought, but finally she barged inside the Control Room.

  There were several empty stations. Dead Children lay in body bags on the far side of the room.

  She began to check those bags one by one.

  “Tanner’s not there,” Stanson said.

  Ari spun toward him. In her distraught state, she hadn’t thought to ping Stanson to confirm that Tanner was actually still in the Control Room. “Where is he, then?”

  “He boarded the ship via a hatch on deck three. I’m guessing he connected to the Inside immediately, via a wireless access port.”

  “Send me the hatch location!” she ordered Stanson.

  The requested item appeared on her aReal a moment later.

  Ari spun about and hurried to the hatch. When it opened, Tanner stood there.

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly for a few moments and then she threw herself into his arms.

  “Tanner. Tanner.” She kissed him, unable to quench the urgent need inside of her.

  Tanner returned her kiss just as passionately.

  Finally he pulled away. “When you thrust your sword into my chest, Kade lost his hold over me entirely and I managed to disbelieve. I can do it without a mirror sometimes, as you know. The sword helped, of course. I don’t know if you noticed my expression, but I couldn’t believe I’d been stabbed. My mind just couldn’t comprehend it. And that hastened my return to the real world.”

  She hugged him tight, not wanting to let go. “Don’t ever make me do that again.”

  “Look,” someone said from the Control Room behind her.

  Ari led Tanner inside. The alien ship filled the viewscreen. The colossal vessel had been split into two pieces, with one portion roughly a third the size of the other.

  “Guess we don’t have to worry about a threat from that department for a while,” Stanson said.

  “What about Hoodwink?” Ari said.

  epilogue

  Ari, Tanner, and Hoodwink watched the sun set from the top of the Forever Gate that surrounded Kismet. Their legs dangled over the steep precipice. Gemma was with them, dressed in her newly minted gol clothes, the binary number 1011—eleven—stamped onto her chest.

  Briar was with them, too, his chest similarly labeled, though his number was 1100—twelve. He seemed to be enjoying his new life as a gol. He had been utterly surprised when he had awakened in the real world as a “skinny wretch,” and he had demanded that they put him back Inside forthwith so that he could be restored to his former girth.

  Caylin was also present. She had taken both Gemma and Briar under her wing in the relearning center, and while not officially their relearning specialist, she spent most of her time with them.

  “Do you think he’s watching us?” Gemma asked.

  Ari glanced at her. “Your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  Ari considered her words. “He’s passed the final Forever Gate that all life must eventually cross in this existence. But I think, given the multitude of dimensions and realities in this universe, there is a good chance that yes, he is watching even here in this nested world of the mind. And if he is, I’m sure he’s very proud of what you’ve done, Gemma. Proud of what we’ve all done.”

  Gemma reached across Hoodwink and momentarily gripped her hand. “Thank you.”

  Ari observed the Keepers working far below, Children conscripted into repairing the world in real-time. They moved from place to place, erasing ruined streets, replacing them with houses and shops, and populating them with furniture and accessories.

  Hoodwink followed her gaze.

  “It’s not utopia, yet,” he said. “But it’s getting there, it is.”

  Ari felt another hand touch hers. It was Tanner beside her. His fingers entwined her own.

  She looked into his eyes.

 
“It’s our utopia,” Tanner said.

  “Then let’s make the best of it.” She pressed her lips against his for a short kiss.

  “I can’t watch this mushy stuff!” Caylin leaned forward and launched herself over the edge. Gemma went, too, followed shortly thereafter by Hoodwink.

  “I don’t want to do it,” Briar said. He glanced at Ari and Tanner. “But if I don’t, you’ll never let me live it down, will you? The whoremongers be damned.”

  Briar dropped into the precipice.

  Ari glanced at Tanner. She gave him another small peck, then pulled away. “Shall we?”

  She dragged Tanner over the edge. Together they fell from the heights, hand-in-hand.

  Ari activated the wingsuit plugin that the Children had recently finished. Fabric wings deployed between her arms and ribcage, and both legs. She and the others had uploaded the necessary flying mechanics to their avatars before injecting, giving them the muscle memory of over five hundred flights. Parachutes were ready to auto-open should anyone make a mistake.

  Ari released Tanner and they glided side-by-side, swooping and diving above the distant buildings.

  “Wahoo!” Caylin yelled from up ahead.

  Wahoo.

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  postscript

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