Armageddon (48 page)

E
than ran after the redheaded Etherian who’d agreed to help him find Alara’s apartment. After what felt like a lifetime of charging down streets, cross streets, and alleys, they found Fairview Tower and rode the lift tubes down to level 20. Once there, Ethan raced down the hallway until he came to apartment 20G. He raised his hand to trigger the buzzer by the door, but then he hesitated.

Would Alara be happy to see him? Or would she tell him to go jump off the nearest rooftop?

“What are you waiting for?” the redhead standing behind him asked.

Ethan cast a grimace over his shoulder. “A miracle,” he replied, and then he touched the buzzer.

Moments later the door swished open and Alara appeared, her violet eyes wide and shining. She was even more beautiful than he remembered her.

“Who are you?” Alara asked, her gaze flicking from Ethan to the redhead beside him and back again.

Ethan’s jaw dropped. She didn’t even remember him! What had Omnius done to her?!

“Don’t you recognize me?” he asked. But then he realized why. Therius had cloned him on Origin and in the process he’d turned the clock back by about thirty years. Alara hadn’t met him as a young man, so she wouldn’t recognize him now.

“Ethan?” Alara asked.

Or maybe she would…

Alara’s eyes widened, and her ruby lips parted in a gasp. Her shock only lasted a moment, however, before her eyes narrowed to angry slits and her gaze settled on the redhead standing beside him. “Is this your new girlfriend?” she asked, thrusting out her chin. Tears sprang to her eyes, but it wasn’t sadness Ethan saw shimmering there—it was hate.

“Let me explain—” Ethan said, taking a quick step forward and reaching for her hand.

“Don’t touch me!” she said, recoiling from him and slapping his hands away.

“Alara, just listen!” He nodded sideways to indicate the redhead. “She’s someone I met on the way over. She helped me find you!”

“Find me? You already know where I live. Or did you get drunk again and forget that, too? The first time you forgot you were married to me, and now you forgot where I live. Pretty soon you’re going to forget you ever met me. Why did you come here, Ethan? Why transfer to a clone? Did you really think I would take you back after what you did?”

Ethan’s brow furrowed. He was missing something. “Wait a minute,” he said. “When did I come here?”

“The night after you cheated on me, you came to convince me that it had all been a drunken mistake, that you thought Valari was me. You really don’t remember any of that? Wow… when you get drunk you don’t mess around!”

“Mom?” a little girl’s voice came from somewhere within the apartment. “Who is it?”

Ethan’s heart jumped in his chest.
Trinity!

Alara turned to address their daughter. “It’s your father,” she said, just as Trinity appeared.

“Trin,” he whispered.

She looked uncertain, not recognizing him.

“Don’t you remember me?” He tried a crooked smile, but it came out broken. His eyes burned with the threat of tears. His own daughter didn’t recognize him!

But then Trinity’s eyes widened and she gasped. “Dad!” she exclaimed. She ran toward him and crushed him in a desperate hug. “I missed you so much!”

“So did I, sweetheart,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “So did I.”

Alara looked on. She bit her lip and shook her head. “Why did you do it, Ethan? You’re here now, a clone. Despite all your objections to life in Etheria and Lifelink transfers, you decided to become a clone anyway. You could have followed us here rather than drink yourself senseless and end up cheating on me with another woman!”

Ethan grimaced, feeling those words stab him straight through the heart. “Alara, I didn’t transfer… not the way you think, anyway. When I woke up in Valari’s apartment and realized what I’d done, and then I thought about you and Trinity, both dead—at least, that’s how it seemed to me at the time—it was all too much for me. I couldn’t take it. I crashed an air car into the surface and died a Null, Alara.”

“You what?” Alara frowned. “Then why did Omnius bring you back?”

“It wasn’t him. I woke up in the Getties, on Origin. A man named Therius resurrected me. He said he intercepted my Lifelink data when I died, and he used it to clone me. He’s been doing that for some time to recruit his army from Avilon. You saw his message, right?”

Alara’s eyes widened. “Yes. You came with them?”

Ethan nodded. “We need to go now, while we still have a chance.”

“Wait—you killed yourself before or after you came here to convince me to take you back?”

Ethan’s brow furrowed. “I never came here, Alara.”

“Yes, you did.”

“If I did, then it wasn’t me.”

“You looked more like you than you do now. You were still old.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Unless Omnius brought you back and aged your clone so that even you wouldn’t know he’d resurrected you. Why go to all of that trouble?”

Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but we can figure this out later. We need to go.”

“Go where? Therius said he came to set Avilon free. Why leave now?”

“What he didn’t tell you is that Omnius has a massive warship in orbit right now. It’s not even right to call it a ship. It’s a hollow shell five times the size of Avilon that Omnius calls
New Avilon.
Even crippled as he is, we’re too badly outnumbered to win. Therius knows it, and he has a plan, but you don’t want to be around to see him put that plan into action.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Union fleet is loaded with nanite bombs. Therius is going to drop them on Avilon if Omnius doesn’t agree to back down.”

“
What?
Why would he do that?”

Ethan shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

“They’re going to kill us?” a panicky voice interrupted.

Ethan turned to see the redhead who’d led him here backing away slowly, shaking her head. She had her arms wrapped around her shoulders, hugging herself.

“It’s okay,” Ethan said. “We’re going to be long gone before that happens.”

The redhead backed into a corner and sunk to the floor in a daze.

“Who is she?” Alara whispered.

“I don’t know. I ran into her on the hover train on my way here,” Ethan replied.

Alara watched the other woman for a moment before turning back to him. “If what you’re saying is true, then we have to do something, Ethan.”

“Yeah, run away and never look back. And we need to go
now.
We’re running out of time.” He reached for her arm, but she resisted. “Alara…”

“We can’t abandon the entire human race, Ethan.”

“What choice do we have?”

“We can’t just stand by and watch trillions of people die!”

Ethan sighed. “If you have an idea, I’d love to hear it.”

“You tell me. You came with them. Isn’t there some way you can get to the bombs? Disable them somehow?”

Ethan shook his head. “We tried that.”

“We?”

“Me and Atta.”

“Atta Heston? She came with you?”

Ethan nodded. “The only way to stop those bombs from going off is to bring Omnius back online so that he can intercept them with planetary defenses, but we’re never going to escape Avilon if we do that. No one will. The war will be over in seconds.”

Alara grimaced. “Then we’ll be back where we started.”

“Yes.”

“But what’s worse? A life of slavery to a lying, manipulating AI is still better than no life at all.”

Ethan arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

“Let me put it another way: would you rather be alive on Avilon with me and Trinity, or dead and turned to free-floating atoms by a hungry swarm of nanites?”

“There’s a third option. Run while we still can, and live free somewhere far from here.”

Alara shook her head. “Even if we could, and Omnius never found us—which you and I both know is unlikely—could you live with trillions of deaths on your conscience, knowing that you could have done something to stop those people from dying?”

“Frek it!” Ethan pounded the wall with his fist, startling Trinity. Ethan saw her wide eyes and trembling lips and began rubbing her back. He went on in a calmer voice, “We don’t even know if the bomb threat is real. What if it’s just a bluff? And even if it’s not, Therius might stop short of using the nanites.”

“You met this Therius, didn’t you?”

“Yes…”

“So what do you think? Would he use them?”

Ethan thought about that for a moment, remembering the Union leader’s emphasis on faith and belief in a higher power. “I think he’s a codice-thumping nut who’ll blow us all to the netherworld if we give him half a chance.”

“Then it’s not an empty threat.”

“No.”

Alara stood there, staring at him for a long moment. “How do we bring Omnius back online?” she whispered.

Ethan grimaced. “We’re going to have to disable the Eclipser.”

“The… ?”

“The device we used to take Omnius offline. It disrupts quantum technology.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“Roughly.”

“Then let’s go,” Alara said, turning and leaving her apartment.

“Hold on a second!” Ethan called after her, but she didn’t turn around.

Cursing under his breath, Ethan took Trinity’s hand and then glanced at the redhead who’d brought him this far. She was huddled on the floor in a fetal position, her eyes glazed. He couldn’t leave her there. Grimacing, he walked over and offered his free hand to help her up.

“Let’s go,” he said.

She stared at his hand, as if she didn’t know what to do with it.

“Come on!” he snapped.

She grabbed his hand and he yanked her to her feet. He turned and ran to catch up with his wife, dragging Trinity along. They arrived at the lift tubes together, and found Alara already waiting there with the call button lit.

“Alara, you’re not coming with me.”

“You bet your cheating ass I am,” she replied.

“What about Trinity? This is going to be dangerous.”

“We’re clones, Ethan. We already died. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“You could die again, and we could fail to bring Omnius back online. Then you’re going to stay dead.”

“Then let’s make sure we don’t fail. Besides, you just said we’re all going to die anyway.”

“We’re all going to die?” Trinity whimpered.

“Not if we run,” Ethan said.

“No one’s running anywhere,” Alara replied. Then she looked to Trinity and smiled. “And no one is going to die, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”

“Frek it…” Ethan muttered.

One of the lifts opened up and they all piled in. Ethan selected the highest street level available, level 225, and then leaned back against the far wall of the lift. The redhead came slinking in just as the doors were closing.

Alara eyed the other woman anew as the lift tube shot upward. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jena Faros,” the other woman replied.

“Alara Ortane. Nice to meet you. You don’t have to go with us.”

“I want to,” Jena said, hugging herself again and backing into the farthest corner of the lift.

Ethan was busy reassuring Trinity, so he didn’t notice what Jena was doing until it was too late. In one smooth motion she snatched his sidearm and pointed it at his head. He felt the weapon trembling in her hands, the barrel shivering against his scalp.

“I’m getting off Avilon,” she said, “and you’re going to fly me out of here.”

Chapter 44

E
than felt Jena’s arm shaking, the stolen sidearm shivering and jumping against the side of his head, and he knew that she wasn’t prepared to use it.

“You’re going to shoot me in front of my family?” he asked, turning his head to place the barrel of the weapon between his eyes.

Jena Faros backed away from him. “I will if I have to.”

Ethan took a step toward her.

“Stop!” she said.

Ethan froze. “If you shoot me, you won’t have a pilot to fly you off Avilon.”

“I can fly myself out of here.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because you have a ship that Omnius can’t track or control. If he comes back online, he won’t be able to interfere with my escape.”

“But he can still track
you.
”

“I’ll deal with my Lifelink later.”

“All right, so we escape Avilon, then what? You kill me for my trouble?”

“No, we find a planet far from Avilon and live out the rest of our lives free of Omnius’s influence. Your wife is a fool if she thinks Omnius will be grateful that she brought him back online.”

Ethan took another step.

“I said stop!”

Alara hit the emergency brakes on the lift, and it came to a sudden stop just a few floors from their destination. The lift’s inertial management system kept them from feeling much, but a piercing alarm screamed inside the lift, stealing Jena’s attention for a split second. That was all Ethan needed.

He lunged toward her and snatched the weapon from her hands. Retreating quickly, he aimed it at her chest. “You’re going to have to go by yourself,” he said. “My wife is right. We can’t just leave everyone to die. We’re going to save a lot of lives today.”