“Follow me if you want to live,” I say, a bit passive-aggressively. My patience level for everything right now is at negative ten. If he doesn’t learn to accept this madness and try and fight through it with me, then I will drag him in my arms just as he picked me up when I couldn’t stand no longer.
Jake listens.
That’s good.
The only problem is I have no idea where we are going. We could be headed straight towards a police blockade, into an approaching imperial tank or enemy line, or entering the direct line of fire of one of the aircraft roaming above the skyline, readying to drop bombs and other explosives on us the moment that Li deems it necessary.
He’s not going to let us get away this time.
The only way out is to do something most would consider crazy. That most would consider evil.
I have no clue what to consider it anymore.
All I care about is my own survival, and I don’t care who I take down in the process.
I can feel guilty about it later. But as we run directly behind the dumpster, pushing further into the darkness of the alleyway, all I can think about is the thousands of dead bodies in the esports stadium.
All these people deserve to die.
Every one of the imperial soldiers.
Every person who has ever supported Li.
“Where are you running to?” Jake hisses under his breath. The security robots locked onto the targets in front of the dumpster rather quickly and are already firing bullets at them. A close-range gun fight is taking place yards behind us with massive robotic machines firing away at military personnel.
The imperial soldiers can’t fire bullets at us even if they tried. But they will explode the robots into a mess of metal soon enough, and there are likely hundreds more imperial soldiers closing in our location from every direction.
“Away,” I echo back. My voice bounces off the cement lining the buildings on either side of us. As opposed to the glass skyscrapers that regularly top one thousand feet in height, some even topping two thousand feet, in the billionaire district of Beijing, in the poorer neighborhoods where most live, ugly brick and stone mid-rises constitute most of the living space. It looks exactly like the images I have seen of war-torn countries in former Soviet Eastern Europe except that this city hasn’t fallen under the darkness of war—yet.
“This is stupid,” Jake says, still keeping up with me.
In front of us, the alleyway comes to an end. And instead of leading out into a larger street or tiny wall that we can easily jump over (yes, this is what I pictured happening in my mind), there is a large, impassable building easily twenty stories high. I quickly realize it is the extension of the buildings lining either side of the alleyway.
In other words, we entered a dead end are now trapped.
Great.
Maybe Jake is right.
“That’s a building!” He stops running now and turns to look behind us. On each side of the dark alleyway, metal bars outline the windows, with hundreds of them lining the ugly gray stone building hundreds of feet in the air. A pit of utter darkness stands in between us and the remnants of the smoke and gunfire up ahead.
One of the robots explodes, some of the debris flying far enough down the alleyway to skid to our feet. Then another one explodes, and another one explodes, each wave of force shaking the ground and causing another round of horrific screams to pierce my ears from the pedestrians on the street.
I can feel dozens of eyes peering out the windows of the building, staring down at me and Jake, who are paralyzed in the darkness.
Despite the line of dead bodies of imperial soldiers whose lives the security robots have successfully ended, there are still dozens more, and they are coming.
But we still have one way out.
“Thirty-foot metal ladder.” I am specific as possible with my command. I double-tap the Chimera Cube immediately after and ignore Jake’s outburst. He doesn’t have to trust me to go along with this.
He knows his odds of survival are better when listening to me than listening to them, even if slim either way.
The ladder appears, gravity taking the heavy object down to the cracked pavement underneath us the moment it forms. I double-tap the Chimera Cube and then tap it again.
“Two machine guns with five clips of ammo.”
The machine guns appear in the air. I grab on to each one and let the ammo fall to the floor. Jake still looks at me shocked as I hand him the gun. None of this is registering as real to him yet. Normally he would be able to adapt to the situation within minutes and at least take some sort of initiative.
But this is too much for him.
“Is this a video game?” Jake grabs the machine gun from me, his body stiffening with the weight of it. He didn’t expect it to be heavy at all. Another security robot dies, the all too familiar sound of a battery pack erupting into a thousand pieces sending chills down my spine.
I pile the five clips of ammo into my backpack and zip up the Chimera Cube inside it. I can’t even imagine how many people in this building saw a large metal ladder and machine guns appear out of nowhere. Either way, it doesn’t matter.
The Chinese government will silence any of their suspicions in a second. And if unsuccessful, well, they will kill them.
A few imperial soldiers break past the last robot before it is dead. The body count of imperial soldiers is now easily into the double digits from a quick glance, but there are triple digits and more behind them. We can’t possibly ever kill them all without causing mass destruction that would end up with us dead too.
“This is real life.” I flinch as the top of the ladder slams against the building and makes a terrible screeching noise. It is extremely heavy, and when I try to adjust it from its base, my lower back feels like it’s going to pop.
The light of a circling helicopter above briefly illuminates the side of the building. The top of the ladder is resting right on the ledge of a third-story window.
Now it’s time to break in.
“Climb up there and shoot your way in, I will hold the ladder,” I yell, and he listens. Sweat is dripping down the sides of my face, and I can feel the exhaustion tugging at my eyelids, but the adrenaline has every muscle in my body numbed and ready to fight.
He doesn’t acknowledge me. Nor does he hesitate.
I tense both my shoulders underneath the resistance of the ladder pushing outward. As he propels himself upward with each step, part of his force directed behind him, the wall pushes back on the ladder in return.
It’s so close to falling. I close my eyes, the continuous strain on my muscles proving to be a pain that I was not ready for after a day that I would have liked to be over hours ago.
The bullets launch in our direction.
They aren’t playing around anymore. They won’t stop until our bodies can be added to the pile among their brethren.
I feel one bullet connect with my ass.
Yes, that hurts, as you can imagine.
It hurts a lot, especially because the bullet tears through the minimal amount of flab I have coating my behind and smashes right into my tail bone.
I keep one hand on the ladder and pick up the machine gun I left by my feet. I turn and haphazardly fire a number of bullets in their direction. My attempts at slowing their movements are futile.
They are now feet away from being able to tear me apart without a problem.
A wave of bullets along with the familiar noise of glass shattering hits my ears. Jake has made it to the top, the bullets successfully slicing through the metal and glass.
Now it’s go time.
I throw the machine gun to the side, not wanting it to hamper my movements up the ladder. It’s just me, my backpack, and my bleeding ass trying to make it through a third-story window before I die.
The ladder is wobbly underneath me even with Jake holding it steady as best as he can from the top. The helicopter circling our location stops in its tracks. Its blinding spotlight is no
w hovering right above me. I can’t even see the rungs of the ladder in front of me. The only thing I have to guide me is the cold, rigid feel of the metal in my fingers as I claw my way through the light. Its beam of photons is so intense that I can feel its heat hitting my skin.
As annoying as this is, the heat briefly interrupts with the infrared sensors that the imperial soldiers wear. Their gunfire becomes more sporadic and less accurate. I take full advantage of the few seconds of reduced gunfire that the beautiful calamity gives me.
I claw my way up the ladder, one more bullet connecting with my right shoulder as I reach the top. Jake pulls me inside, the darkness of the room blinding me in an entirely new way. I keep my eyes closed, the ebony and bright lights clashing combined with the terrible pain shooting through my body too much for me to take in.
There’s only one thing left to do.
“Dude. Someone’s coming up the ladder.” Jake stares out at the mini alleyway full of dumpsters and trash. Above the sounds of the sirens are the screams of the astonished onlookers in the building.
Not until just now did I notice the dead woman lying on the floor of the room. I can’t discern any of her features in the dark. All I can feel is the blood from her body swathing my already blood-stained shoes.
“Wake up, man,” I say, the anger coursing through me, not at him, but at the fact that these people won’t give up. Jake follows my lead as I move back to the window, shattered glass crunching beneath my feet. Scratches line my body from the metal bars and pieces of glass tearing into my skin as Jake pulled me in.
I put two hands on the top of the ladder and push. Jake does the same. The spotlight of the helicopter is gone, leaving my eyes extremely confused as whether to be dilated or contracted.
Our one goal is to push over this ladder and have the imperial soldier who is halfway up it fall horrifically to the floor below. We are successful, but not before another wave of bullets is fired at us. I duck down, only letting my arms be exposed to the projectiles. Jake reacts a bit too late. A bullet connects in the region of his heart.
“Fuck!” The rage hits an entirely new level inside me. My muscles unlock all their inner strength, each muscle fiber tearing gruesomely as I attempt to throw the ladder off the ledge.
My force finally overwhelms that of the two soldiers steadying the ladder at the bottom. The top of the ladder falls from the ledge of the window. It makes a screeching noise as it scrapes against the stone wall of the building. And then gravity takes hold of it, causing it to collide with the ground in a resounding thud. I can’t imagine the pain that man who unfortunately was thrown off it and crushed by the dozens of pounds of metal is feeling.
He will be dead soon anyway.
I place my finger on the scanner and open my backpack. I place my finger on the Chimera Cube.
“Heal.” I double-tap it. I could give two shits if the Chinese government finds medical nanobots designed to heal tissue rapidly.
Jake has to live.
The pain tearing apart my backside and pulling at the edges of my vision needs to fade.
“Help me.” He chokes, the life escaping out of him as a thick waterfall of blood flows from his chest. His skin is paler than I have seen it, his eyes wide and body frozen with shock.
I don’t have time to make sure he lives.
I have to kill everyone outside first.
All I know is that the bullet wound on my behind is gone, the pain subsiding nearly instantly.
“Two grenades.” I tap the Chimera Cube and then double-tap it. A wave of blue light followed by green flashes over it. Two grenades identical in size and feel to the smoke grenade appear above the cube. They fall to the ground and I place my hands under each to catch them.
This time they aren’t full of smoke.
They are full of shrapnel.
I release the clip of one and chuck it out the window. Immediately after, I do the same for the next. Right as the second grenade leaves my hand, the first one connects with the ground. If my dissociative powers were at some masterful level, I could register that memory in my big pile of do-not-disturb darkness from the many times I have done horrific things.
But when I peer out the window, a sick desire in me wanting to see the destruction, I have to hold myself back from puking.
The smoke dissipates and a pile of bodies lies at the bottom of the alleyway, their blood and disfigured limbs blending in with the trash in the darkness.
I killed all of those people.
And when I look at their bodies, the tragedy of death claims their lives no differently than it did with the thousands of the rén who died at the hands of the government.
At the end of the day they are all just people.
The only difference is I killed these people.
I am no better than them.
And in the brief moment that I look out at the wasteland of my own destruction, the cracked windows on the first story and chunks of cement strewn across the alleyway, I can’t help but feel like the same monster that Li is.
Chapter 16
“What is in that thing? It’s scaring me.” Jake steps back from me, his hand still over the bloody hole that used to be on his chest. His shirt is ripped from the bullet piercing through it, but his body is now spotless.
“I’ll explain later.” I zip the bag up and run into the hallway in the small one-bedroom apartment. By any standards, this is a normal apartment. Pictures line the walls in simple black frames of the woman with her children throughout the years. I don’t take the time to look at them too closely. I can’t ever learn about this woman’s life, her past, or what we took away from this world.
We have to keep going.
“We might not live till later.” Jake storms after me as I try to find the nearest door without tripping over any furniture. The lights are dimmed, the woman who lived here likely getting ready for bed before Jake broke in and shot her. “I thought we were done playing these games. I thought we would always be honest with each other.”
“I was never supposed to tell you about this.” I spot the door at the edge of the small living room and dash towards it. The building is undoubtedly surrounded by now with dozens of soldiers and officers rushing inside. If we hide in here, they will find us within hours at most.
Our only shot is getting out of here now.
“I don’t care what you were supposed to do.” Jake throws up his arms as I open the door into the hallway. “We have the government of China after us and this whole city on lockdown because you successfully got us out of a torture chamber meant to kill us and got a hoverboard to appear out nowhere. I feel like we’re both on crack, but every wild thought we have can actually come true.”
“You’re not too far off from the truth.” I grin at his statement, a rush of giddy excitement flowing through me. Every time I take a second to think about the true capabilities that I have with the Chimera Cube, instead of all the firepower the Chinese government has, I feel invincible.
“Actually, that’s exactly true. Let’s take a moment here to regroup.” I close the door, the sounds of attack dogs and sirens muffled by the heavy wooden slab. I place my finger on the scanner and zip open the bag holding the Chimera Cube once again. This time Jake gets a slight glance at the pure white glory of the cube and I can tell that he is as surprised as I was the first time I saw it in Zion.
He watches me as I try and take control of the situation, when in reality the Chimera Cube is turning me into someone who is more delusional than anything else.
“Two bullet-proof suits of armor.” I say the words, hoping that the cube delivers us some hi-tech lightweight armor that the military uses.
It delivers on the unspoken promise. I slip on the bodysuit as gravity takes hold of it and Jake grabs it from the air as it falls and does the same.
It feels like another layer of skin on my body, but I mean that more in an awesome way and less in a creepy way.
There’s no telling yet if this thing effe
ctively blocks bullets, but it’s lightweight fabric that stretches and morphs around my body and wraps around my head, all complete with an easy-to-use zipper in the front.
“Long-range rifle.” I double-tap the Chimera Cube after tapping it initially, and a long-range rifle identical to the millions of 3D-printed guns in the United States appears in the air. I grab it, training my eyes on the scope to see the kind of precision it has.
I open the door and can easily lock onto a lightbulb over one hundred feet in the air hanging in the middle of the hallway.
I shut it for the last time and command the Chimera Cube to produce a weapon that I know Jake will love.
I tap the cube. “Laser gun.” I double-tap it after I say it and the turquoise weapon immediately forms. I can’t take any chances right now on a certain weapon or command not existing in the database.
Every moment counts.
I hand it to him, and he glances at me in shock.
“It’s exactly what you think it is, and yes, it works just as easy as pressing down on the trigger.” I zip up my backpack while talking and strap it around the front of my body so that it is easier to access when I’m running. “Now, let’s run.”
We burst out of the door.
The hallway is completely empty, but the building isn’t. The echoes of stampeding footsteps all around the building rock the walls. Someone is screaming on a megaphone in Mandarin from outside. Their words are slurred together and high-pitched, the anxiety in their voice only magnifying the tension in the air.
I can imagine what they are screaming.
For everyone to stay inside.
For everyone to be aware of dangerous intruders.
What they aren’t saying is that the government doesn’t give a shit how many people we kill. They care how many people live to tell the tale of seeing a technology that was supposed to stay locked away.
“We can’t go to the staircases.” My thoughts are spinning so rapidly in my mind that I let the most prominent ones leave my mouth. “There are soldiers storming our floor from the roof and the ground floors.”
The Conspiracy Chronicles Boxset 2 Page 14
