“That’s for Charlie,” he said solemnly as The Godhand’s head separated into two pieces just as his lifeless body toppled to the floor.
“HOW MUCH TIME DO WE HAVE, ECHO?” I ASKED HOWIE AS I STOOD BEFORE THE enormous antimatter bomb that sat in the center of the main hall.
“You’ve got just over sixty seconds. I just sent a remote signal to the beacon in your coat pocket. You should see a wormhole opening any second now!” Howie quickly replied.
“I see it!” I shouted as a colorful orb of light, crackling with white hot energy, appeared in the center of the room a few meters to the right of the bomb. “What do you need me to do?” I asked as the wormhole suddenly ballooned outward until it was big enough to drive a bus through.
“I need you to throw the bomb into the wormhole,” Howie said. “That’s the only way we can stop this, Reaper.”
“Howie, that’s impossible! This thing is as big as a semi-truck!” I protested.
“I know that, Reaper. It weighs about eighty-five thousand pounds, but if you inject yourself with the last of the epinephrine doses you should be able to lift it. You have to hurry though!”
“Are you sure I can take that many injections at once?” I asked as I reached into my inner coat pocket and withdrew three adrenaline injectors.
“There’s a chance you could go into cardiac arrest but this is the only chance we have to stop the bomb, Reaper. This is the only way that you can save Monica!” Howie urged.
My heartbeat raced as I stared at the three injectors in my hand and contemplated putting my life in danger in order to save Monica— of course I’d also be saving about a billion other lives as well, but at the end of the day hers was the one I cared the most about. When it all boiled down to it, it was a no brainer.
“You have thirty seconds, Reaper! What are you waiting for?!” Howie demanded as I plunged the three injectors into my thigh and released the invigorating doses into my system. My heart rate drastically spiked as I tossed the injectors aside and set my sights on the bomb.
“No, Reaper!” Ace suddenly yelled from a few meters behind me as he stared in horror at the rapidly spinning wormhole to our right. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he continued as he abruptly dashed towards me.
“Don’t listen to him, Reaper!” Howie protested. “This is the only way to save her! You have to get rid of that bomb or you’ll never see Monica again!”
My heart throbbed wildly in my chest as Ace stormed towards me with his hands clutching his razor sharp sword. He was shouting something as he galloped forward but I couldn’t hear a thing over the sound of my own heartbeat echoing inside my head. I may not have been able to hear his words but the intense look in his eyes said enough. There was no doubt in my mind that Ace was moving to stop me— But why? Why would my best friend try to stop me from saving the love of my life? I thought as I clenched my fists and glared back at him. Perhaps he was concerned about me putting my own life in danger in order to save Monica’s but what right did he have to intervene? It was my life and if I had to lay it on the line in order to make sure that Monica was safe that’s exactly what I intended to do.
The entire room shook as I raised my right foot and slammed it hard into the marble floor but Ace flipped high into the air as a deep crack ripped through the floor and spread outward towards him.
“Twenty seconds!” Howie screamed in my earpiece as I leapt upward to intercept Ace.
Time was almost frozen in place as Ace and I hung in midair and simultaneously prepared to attack. His hands tightly gripped the handle of his shimmering sword but his eyes still desperately pleaded for me to stop— but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t find a single reason not to throw that bomb into the wormhole and as I looked into Ace’s eyes I could tell that he realized the truth. I could tell that he realized that the only way to stop me would be to kill me.
I fired an open palmed strike at his chest, hoping to hit him before he used his lighting quick reflexes to dodge and cut me in half, but to my surprise Ace didn’t even try to defend himself. Instead, he simply closed his eyes and hung his head as my hand slammed against his chest and sent him crashing to the floor below.
“Fifteen seconds, Reaper!” Howie yelled as I landed and whipped around to face the bomb. “Hurry!” he continued as I zoomed over and grabbed a sturdy rail at the end of the monstrous device.
“Holy crap, this thing is heavy!” I exclaimed as my arms trembled while I struggled to lift the end of the bomb a few feet into the air.
“Ten seconds!” Howie continued as my right hand suddenly slipped, but luckily I was able to reach down and catch the rail before the bomb could hit the floor.
“What are you doing, Reaper?! You only have five seconds!” Howie shouted as I gritted my teeth and squatted in order to lower my center of gravity.
Every muscle in my body was on fire as the weight of the forty-ton bomb bore down on me but I gritted my teeth and fought through the pain because I knew that Monica’s very existence depended on me. The floor beneath me threatened to cave in as I heaved with all my might and hurled the monstrous bomb straight up into the air.
“Hurry, Reaper!” Howie yelled as I zoomed back a few meters then barreled towards the falling bomb as it sank back toward the floor.
“One second!” Howie yelled as I leapt into the air and crashed my right foot into the bomb with as much power as I could possibly muster. The forty-ton harbinger of death shot forward as my powerful kick sent it flying towards the colorful wormhole that still crackled with white hot bolts of energy near the center of the room. As soon as the device touched the spinning globe of light it was completely sucked inside— and just like that the bomb was gone.
“Do you realize what you’ve done, Reaper?!” Ace scolded as he approached me from behind while the wormhole rapidly shrank then flickered away into nothing.
“What’s with you, Ace?! What do you have against me saving Monica?!” I demanded as I clenched my fists and whipped around to face him.
“You don’t get it, do you?!” Ace asked as a mixture of horror and anger flashed onto his face. “They’re all dead, Reaper! You just killed everyone in the state of Nevada!”
28. FALLOUT
REAPER:
“TELL ME THAT’S NOT TRUE, HOWIE. TELL ME THAT JASON doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” I gasped as I stared at the anguish in Ace’s eyes.
Audrey and Ace gazed at me in silence as I waited several moments for Howie to reply.
“Dammit, Howie, talk to me!” I demanded.
“What do you want me to say, Reaper?” Howie finally replied after a few more moments of silence.
“I want you to tell me that you didn’t just have me kill millions of people!” I barked.
“He can’t tell you that, Reaper,” Ace angrily interjected. “Because he knows that’s not true! Think about it. With the moon base destroyed there are only two other places with wormhole generators— 3D and Area 51. If Howie had programmed the beacon to open a wormhole to 3D he wouldn’t be talking to us right now, would he?”
“No, that’s not true. He wouldn’t— Howie tell me that’s not true!” I said as I struggled to comprehend what was happening.
“Reaper, you just saved over one billion people,” Howie calmly replied.
“But how many did you have me kill?!” I barked.
“That doesn’t matter, Reaper! What matters is that you averted the complete destruction of an entire country! And in doing so you also managed to save Monica!”
“But at what cost, Howie? If that bomb was powerful enough to destroy all of India then the entire state of Nevada must be ashes right now. There had to have been another way!” I insisted.
“But there wasn’t another way, Reaper! Don’t you think I would have told you if I thought there was?” Howie shot back.
“That’s a bunch of bull, Howie, and you know it!” Ace scoffed. “You did this to kill Director Wells, didn’t you?! You’ve been planning it all along!�
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“I did this to save the planet! This had nothing to do with Director Wells!” Howie barked. “His death was—”
“How many?” I growled, cutting off Howie’s last sentence.
“How many, what?” Howie asked.
“How many people did you just make me murder?” I snarled.
“Most of the west coast is… gone. My best estimate is somewhere around one-hundred million casualties. Reaper, I’m sorry, man. Truly sorry… but there simply was no other way.”
“You are unbelievable, Howie,” I fumed as I struggled to come to grips with just how badly he had manipulated me.
“I had no choice, Reaper.”
“This was not your decision to make, Howie! And you don’t get to treat me like a weapon!” I retorted.
“I wasn't using you as a weapon, Reaper,” Howie insisted. “I was giving you a chance to save Monica!”
“No, stop using her as an excuse to distract me from the truth!” I yelled. “Ace is right! You’ve been manipulating me this entire time!”
“Reaper, you’re my best friend and you know that I’ve always have your best interest in mind! In fact, I’m the only one who has!” Howie protested.
“No… we’re done, Howie,” I said shaking my head as I contemplated the magnitude of his betrayal. “I don’t want anything else to do with you.”
“Don’t do this, Reaper. You know I would have done things differently if I thought I had another choice.”
“You should have trusted me, Howie. You should have trusted that I could have made the tough decision if it came down to it. You didn’t have to manipulate me,” I scolded.
“I was trying to protect you, Reaper! Can’t you see that? By not telling you about the plan, I’m the one who’s ultimately responsible. Not you!”
“I don’t buy that crap for a second!” Ace hissed. “This was an assassination of Director Wells and that’s all there is to it. And you won’t get away with this either, Howie! I swear I’ll make you pay for this if it’s the last thing I do!”
“I thought you’d feel that way, Jason,” Howie said ominously. “And maybe Reaper feels the same way, too, but I wonder how he would feel if he also knew just how deep your own betrayal ran.”
“What’s he talking about, Ace?” I asked as I raised an eyebrow and glanced over to Ace.
“Yeah, Jason. I think it’s about time Reaper found out about Project Ori—” Howie started but before he could finish his sentence the transmission suddenly ended without warning.
“Howie?” I called out after a few moments of silence. “Howie?!” I repeated after almost a minute went by with no reply.
“What just happened?” Ace asked as he and Audrey stared at me in bewilderment.
“I don’t know. The transmission just went dead,” I said as a wave of confusion washed over me.
“He’s getting out of control, Reaper. I think we both know that— and with a mind like his who knows what kind of havoc he could wreak if we don’t keep him in check,” Ace cautioned.
“Yeah… maybe you’re right,” I said as I rubbed my chin and wondered what Ace was implying. I was beyond furious at what Howie had done but I certainly didn’t want him dead— but there was something about the way that Ace had threatened to make him “pay” that made me wonder what me meant by keeping Howie in check. “We’ll just have to talk to him. Maybe we can work this thing out,” I finally said as I stared at the razor sharp sword that Ace still held within his hands.
“Yeah… let’s go talk,” Ace said flatly as he took out his wormhole beacon and opened the virtual display. He fiddled with the device for a few moments but surprisingly nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as Ace continued to press the virtual buttons that extended from the tiny device.
“I’m not sure. I’m punching in the correct sequence but for some reason nothing’s happening. It’s like Howie’s blocking us or something.”
“Just keep trying,” I said as several knots tightened in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure why I was getting nervous but my gut was telling me that something wasn’t right. Perhaps it had something to do with the last thing that Howie had said before his transmission was cut off. He had started to indicate that Ace wasn’t quite as trustworthy as I had come to believe, but what exactly was he getting at? I had long known that there were a few peculiar things about Ace that didn’t quite add up but I usually ignored the impulse to dig any deeper because the one thing I was always sure of was that at the end of the day Ace was my friend.
“Hey, why don’t you and Audrey check on Tango while I try to get this thing to work?” Ace asked as he continued to tinker with buttons on his wormhole beacon’s display.
“Yeah. Good idea,” I said as I tried to dismiss my suspicions as nothing more than irrational paranoia. But what if it’s more than that? I thought as Audrey and I walked over to check on Tango. What if I’ve let my guard down so much that I’ve allowed myself to become best friends with the one person in the world who could kill me?
29. SMOKE AND MIRRORS
HOWIE:
NEARLY EVERYTHING HAD GONE ACCORDING TO PLAN… but for some reason it still didn’t feel like much of a victory. Most of the lights within 3D were either turned off or set to the dimmest setting as I sat in front of my supercomputer and stared aimlessly at the monitor before me. So many lives had been sacrificed and because of what I had done I knew that Reaper would likely hate me forever. I at least took solace in knowing that, for the moment, I had made the world a safer place, and to be honest I couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction of having finally gotten rid of Director Wells. Ace was absolutely right about my plan— I could have thought of another way to stop the bomb but doing so would have meant giving up on my plans to kill Wells.
“I’ve gotta hand it to you, kid,” a male voice suddenly rang out from somewhere behind me. “I didn’t think you had the stones.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on edge as I recognized the voice and my eyes widened with horror as I spun around in my chair and laid eyes on the last person I ever expected to see.
“What’s the matter, kid?” Director Wells smirked as I stared at him in silence. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He was standing fifteen feet away from me with both hands tucked inside the pockets of the dark grey trench coat that he was wearing.
“You— you’re supposed to be—”
“Dead?” Wells finished as his cold grey eyes pierced holes through me. “Don’t flatter yourself kid. You’re smart… but you’re not nearly smart enough to take me out of the game.”
“But how? You were at Area 51 and that bomb took out the entire state!” I exclaimed.
“It sure did… but I wasn’t there when it went off. With all the commotion in India you had hoped I wouldn’t notice the wormhole that you opened in my facility, but unfortunately for you, Mr. Vargas… I always keep my ear to the ground. It only took me a few seconds to deduce what you were up to so I hacked into your system here, undetected by you, of course. I tried to reroute the wormhole in India to this place so that the bomb would emerge here instead of Area 51 but in the end there wasn’t enough time. So I used your wormhole generator here and made the jump just before the fireworks started. You were so glued to that screen that you didn’t even notice when I arrived.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was so sure that I had gotten him— so certain that he was out of the picture for good, yet there he was standing right in front of me and glaring into my very soul with those piercing grey eyes of his.
“You should know that Reaper is on his way here right now,” I warned.
“No he’s not. As far as they know you’re blocking the signal to their beacons and by the time I let them through… you’ll be long gone,” Wells said darkly.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” I replied as I glanced around and looked for something I could use as a weapon. My eyes were still darting around the room when something s
uddenly bit me hard in the stomach. “Dammit!” I cursed as I instinctively brushed my hands against my stomach to swat away the bug that had just bitten me. It was only when my hands felt the wetness of the warm blood that was oozing from my torso that I realized what had truly happened. I tried to back away but I stumbled and fell to the floor as my arms and legs grew weak at the sight of my own blood. A faint trail of gun smoke rose from a hole in the pocket where Wells’ right hand was tucked, and based on the hot lead that I felt burning inside my intestines I had no doubts that he had just shot me in the stomach.
“You were just too smart for your own good, Vargas,” Wells finally said as he withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket and revealed a small caliber pistol with a stubby, high-tech silencer attached to the front of it. “So smart that you couldn’t possibly have imagined that someone else on this forsaken planet could be smarter,” he continued as he slowly advanced towards me while I desperately pressed my trembling hands against the gushing wound in my abdomen.
“You see, Vargas, you may have been the smartest human on the face of this planet,” Wells continued as he stopped in front of me and pushed back his left sleeve, revealing the high-tech watch that he always wore on his wrist. “But you’re certainly not the smartest being,” he gloated as he pressed a sequence of buttons on the watch. My eyes widened with dismay as his body suddenly began to flicker and fade away and when his human form finally vanished, a much shorter, obviously alien version of him emerged.
At first glance he looked similar to one of those little grey aliens that they always show in the movies, but as he glared down at me, still clutching the pistol in his three-fingered right hand, I realized that there was something much more menacing about him. His skin resembled that of a shark— somewhat scaly and grey yet seemingly smooth to the naked eye. His bulbous grey eyes were five times the size of normal human eyes but they were the exact same color as the false eyes that I had come to know from his holographic disguise. My heart thumped uncontrollably in my chest as a wicked smile suddenly spread across his narrow face, revealing a mouthful of pitch black, humanoid teeth.
Savior Part 3: Legion of The Godhand (The Savior Series) Page 26
