Final Empire (33 page)

“How does she contact you?” I snapped.

She dug into her coat pocket.

“Whoa, slow down, hands where I can see them.” She jerked her open palms overhead and I reached into her pocket, retrieving a small device that looked like a vintage pocket watch.

“I-It’s untraceable,” she stammered. “It’s how I…I mean, how the ambassadors from The Order get in touch with—”

“Call her.” I insisted. “Right now.”

“It’s only for emergencies,” she said in a panic. “She calls us if we’re needed, but we’re not to call her unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

With my free hand I snapped open the face of the pocket watch, revealing a touchpad. “I’m feeling a sudden sense of urgency.”

She nodded in agreement and pressed her thumb into the pad. I took the device and placed it on the cobblestone, projecting a holo-screen into the alley.

After a few blips, Valeriya’s face appeared.

“Sister Calderwood,” the young girl said with a yawn, brushing the platinum locks from her face. “It’s late. I told you that…” Her words drifted away when she spotted The God Slayer, pressing a gun into her ambassador’s face. “
You
,” she hissed.

“Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, but I have a quick question for you. Who killed Todd Dzobiak?”

Her tiny pink lips twitched. “Who do you
think?
” She asked playfully.

“Put Kenneth on the com
right now
.” I grabbed a fistful of Maisie’s collar and shoved her towards the holo-screen. “And if you don’t I’ll put a bullet in one of your recruiters.”

“
Please
,” the girl pleaded, dropping to her knees, clapping her palms together in supplication. “Don’t let him kill me!”

Valeriya’s smile was as wide as it was insincere. “Child, you have nothing to fear. This man lacks conviction. He would not take an innocent life. Not like this.”

I pushed Maisie forward until the whole of her horrified face filled the screen, barrel jammed to her temple. She let out a terrified whimper. “And
if
I had the courage to pull the trigger, that wouldn’t bother you? Seeing one of your followers splattered all over an alley?”

“You want to know who killed the brave Detective Todd Dzobiak? You want to know who would be fast enough to stab him sixteen times before he had the chance to react? You would like to know who had the connections to frame a pathetic waste of human life for his murder?” She rattled of the rhetorical questions with an upward tilt of her chin, a prideful tone outlining her words.

When the color drained from my face her smile only widened.

“Why would he do that?” I thundered, my trigger finger trembling. “Why would Kenneth kill an innocent man?”

She sighed theatrically, as if she’d been bored into a near-comatose state by our conversation. “Go back to your fortresses,” she ordered me, suddenly taking on an air of superiority; a queen talking down to a lowly peasant. “Go, resume your perch at the top of the world, along with the rest of the billionaires – the self-appointed elitists who decide the fate of the commoners with a stroke of their pens. Enjoy the final days of your gilded age, Matthew Moxon…because a new empire is about to rise. It’s the final empire this world will ever see.”

The holo-forum winked off and the pocket watch burst with a sizzle of fried electronics and a plume of grey smoke. It had self-destructed, all evidence of the call disappearing.

“Mox?” a voice called out. Gavin stood at the mouth of the alley, traced in a halo of a street lamp against the darkness. “What are you going to do, man?”

Quaking with anger, I didn’t realize I still had the barrel of my gun pressed to Maisie’s head, my hand tightly clenched around her neck. She was still kneeling, whimpering softly.

I pulled the gun away, releasing my grip.

It was a mistake.

Without missing a beat she yanked a small knife from the inside of her boot and pressed off her heels, lunging at my throat. I fired. I put a bullet in her thigh, sending a streak of crimson across the fresh layer of snow.

She screamed and toppled over, grasping at her leg. Her hand covered the wound that might have nicked an artery by the way it was squirting; it was like pressing her thumb against the nozzle of a garden hose, where the pressure forced the liquid to propel in convulsive fits and spurts.

“I wasn’t going to execute her, if that’s what you were asking.” Of course I wasn’t. I wasn’t a monster, and I still had a soul. At least I think I did.

Police sirens blared in the distance, triggering the onset of a migraine. I winced, rubbing my palms into my eyes. I’d dropped the gun somewhere in the previous few seconds but I didn’t know where; the alley was dark and I didn’t have time to locate it. Gavin took me by the arm and guided me through narrow cobblestone alleys and out towards an abandoned football pitch where the TT-100 was cloaked, waiting for our arrival.

We disappeared into the night sky undetected. As Karin spooled up the teleportation drive in preparation for our return, my mind swam with dizziness. It was filled with anger and violence and misplaced self–righteousness, yet I’d never seen things so clearly. I’d made a decision, and there was solace in that; a decision I should have made a long time ago. I had to do what no one else was willing to.

Gavin strapped into the chair next to me, one of six in the jet’s small passenger bay. He put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “I’m worried about you,” he said, his voice labored from our sprint to the rendezvous point.

I stared blankly at the wall ahead. “Don’t.”

“You have this faraway look in your eyes,” he said. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were ready to go to war. I just don’t want you to do anything stupid.”

I didn’t reply. My mind was on autopilot, calculating every variable of every possible scenario I could fathom – each one ending with Kenneth’s brains exploding out the back of his cranium.

Gavin let out an exasperated sigh. “I know what you’re thinking, Mox. I might not be psychic but I know you want to storm Kenneth’s castle, kick down the gates and send him to hell. But he’s an architect, remember? He can construct anything he wants, move as fast as he wants…we’d be sliced to ribbons before we even landed. And I doubt he’s going to follow you back to Switzerland and volunteer to stand next to the world’s most powerful dampening unit.”

Once again, Gavin was my voice of reason. There was no way I’d ever trick Kenneth into stepping anywhere near a two-thousand pound CDU, allowing me to strip away his powers and level the playing field.

“We’re ready to make the jump to Fortress 18,” Karin said, glancing back over her shoulder from the captain’s chair. “Everyone buckled in?”

“WAIT,” I blurted out. “Karin, don’t jump yet. This jet is a transportation prototype, right? Does it have a cargo magnet?”

“Of course,” she shrugged. “Almost every jet has one these days. The neodymium magnet on this baby is top of the line.”

I unbuckled my seatbelt and darted towards the cockpit, frantically scanning the control panel. I ran my fingers over buttons and levers as if I were reading Braille, and the tactile sensation would somehow relay me information. “What’s the maximum payload?”

“Well…” she said, staring at me quizzically, “it’s hard to say because I’ve never tested it out. But judging by the size of the craft, the thrust-to-weight ratio when we perform a vertical—”

“Oh my god, Karin, just
guess,
” I persisted.

“Um…ballpark? Two tons? Possibly three?” she said, frazzled. “W-why do you want to know? What are we picking up?”

I returned to my seat and strapped myself in as Gavin and Karin exchanged a concerned glance. “Erase the jump coordinates and reprogram for Switzerland,” I ordered her. “We’re going to pay Kenneth a visit in the Desolation Islands, but first we need to pick up a housewarming gift.”

From a quarter mile above the mountain range
, the top of Fortress 9 looked like a silver casino chip that had been dropped in the snow, winking up a faint glimmer of moonlight.

We made our descent and an angry female voice blared over the intercom, demanding authentication. It was security from inside the fortress.

I tapped the intercom, leaning close. “Hey Denise,” I said. “This is Matthew Moxon, code number 1138.”

“Ah, sorry Mister Moxon,”
the voice replied,
“Welcome back. Didn’t recognize your ship. The cloaking on your jet plays havoc with our scanners.”

“Not a problem,” I said quickly, drumming my fingers into the dash.

“What can we do for you? You’re cleared to land anywhere on the pad.”

“I need you to
open
the pad this time,” I instructed. “I want access to the Version Two dampening unit. We’re going to activate our magnetic cargo strip and pick it up.”

“You want…you want to actually take the V2 somewhere? Okay, well I’ll need to have the tech guys attach a power source, or it won’t be much good to you.”

“Well
obviously
,” I shouted, with a fierceness in my voice that surprised even myself. “Just get it done and signal us when it’s ready for pick-up.”

“Copy that.”

I returned to my seat and found myself unable to sit still. I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair, fingernails scraping up and down the length of my forearm.

“You all right, man?” Gavin asked. “You seem a little…off. When was the last time you took one of your pills?”

“You know what?” I snapped. “
This
is exactly why I don’t tell you things. You and Peyton are two peas in the same annoying pod. Always with the questions and the accusations…”

He drew back, eyebrows raised. “Don’t bite my head off, Mox. You just look a little agitated. And you’re about to raid an island, armed with no more than a handgun and a comic book salesman at your side.”

I continued to scratch an itch I couldn’t quite feel, though I felt a strange sense of relief as my fingernails dragged along the surface of my cold dry skin. “If you want to leave, Gavin, I don’t care. I’ll drop you back at the fortress and do this alone.”

“I’m
always
with you,” he stated with disarming conviction, “but think about this for a second, Mox. That’s all I’m asking.” He reached out and took hold of my wrists, stopping me just before I’d scraped my forearm raw. “You’re the genius, here – walk through the steps. Say you
do
kill Kenneth. Then what? What will Brynja say? What about Peyton? And how will you live with
yourself
, man? Can you go through all of this again?”

I paused for a moment as his words penetrated, thinking of Arena Mode and the horrors of The Spiral and the things I’d done to survive them. Then I pushed him away. “You don’t get it!” I shouted. “I didn’t just come up with this now – this is
all
I’ve been thinking about. This crazy fucking maniac could destroy the entire world. Don’t you see that? If I don’t kill Frost then there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

Gavin’s sudden intake of breath and widened eyes snapped me out of my rage blackout – at least for a moment. “Y-you…” he swallowed hard. “You just said you need to kill
Frost
. As in, Cameron Frost.”

“No I didn’t,” I scoffed. “I said I needed to kill Kenneth.
Kenneth
needs to die.”

“You need to take a
big
step back and re-evaluate this. You’re losing your shit.”

I raked my fingers through my hair, teeth grinding. “You know what, if you’re not going to be part of the solution, you can just…I can drop you off…”

“Yeah, you already mentioned that,” he said flatly. “But I’m not going anywhere. I might not be able to talk you out of confronting Kenneth but I’m not going to let you do it alone. You go, I go with you. Family, remember?”

An awkward moment floated by and the silence in the passenger bay became deafening.

“Karin,” I shouted. “Where are we with the V2 unit?”

“Prepping to scoop it up now…boss.” She answered without turning around.

Day broke as we hovered over the Desolation Islands.
We’d appeared out of nowhere, blinking just above the wispy cirrus clouds at twenty thousand feet. As we made our gradual descent towards the dusty patchwork of stone and sand, the only man-made structure visible from this altitude (or
any
altitude, for that matter) was the pyramid. Kenneth’s home. And even from this distance, I could tell it had grown.

When I’d first visited the island, the structure was impressive: larger and more detailed than the pyramids at Giza, wedged between two soaring mountains. Now, the apex of the towering monument dwarfed the peaks on either side, stretching impossibly above the landscape. Kenneth had used his abilities to expand it, no doubt to accommodate the sudden influx of new recruits and believers.

Karin tilted the jet on its axis and gazed out the cockpit’s side window, nose pressed to the glass like a kid on her first trip to the zoo. “How the hell did he build that?”

“He’s an architect,” I grumbled, fidgeting in my seat. “He can build whatever he wants.”

Gavin pointed to the passenger bay floor. “And this thing is going to dampen his powers?” He was referring to the one-ton cylindrical monstrosity attached magnetically to the underbelly of our jet; the world’s largest cerebral dampening unit that might prove to be the only weapon in my arsenal powerful enough to stop The Living Eye. “Are you
absolutely
sure this is gonna work Mox? Because if you’re not sure…”

Of course I was sure.
And I was sick to death of everyone questioning my decisions, assuming that whatever idea I’d come up with was going to result in disaster. I had a pretty solid track record of good plans, and I wished someone would give me some goddamned credit. This
was
going to work, and Kenneth was going to pay.

I unstrapped the buckles from my waist and chest, shuffling to the cockpit chair next to the captain’s. “Bring her down, and hover directly over top of the pyramid,” I ordered.

Karin looked at me as if I was an idiot. “I can’t land if I’m over the pyramid, boss. I need a clear spot to set down the V2 so I can lower the landing gear and drop you guys off.”

“Get down to fifteen-hundred feet.” I glanced at the dashboard’s digital altimeter and then back towards the pyramid. “Then drop the V2 when you’re directly overhead.”

Gavin yelped, scrambling into the tiny cockpit. He leaned in, wedged shoulder-to-shoulder between Karin and myself. “You’re going to
bomb
the pyramid with the dampening unit? Won’t that kill a crap-load of innocent people?”

“Aim near the base,” I quickly suggested. “No one will get hurt, but it’ll get Kenneth’s attention.” My mind was on auto-pilot. I was making unfiltered decisions in fast-forward without considering what I was even deciding.

“This isn’t a military jet,” Karin said with a crack in her voice, wiping her sweat-drenched hands off on her jeans. “This is a transport plane. I mean, I
could,
technically, drop the cargo from any altitude, but I can’t guarantee exactly where it’ll land.”

The heat rose in my face, an angry twitching vein pulsing in my forehead. “I’m not asking for your
opinion
,” I said, doing my best not to scream. “I’m telling you to press a
button
. Do you think you can manage that, Karin? Do you think you can do one goddamned thing without questioning me for a change?” I groaned and slammed my palm into the control panel, causing the jet to shudder.

Karin gasped.

I yanked my hand back like it had been pressing against a hot burner. “What was that?” I scanned the controls, as if the dials and panels and blinking lights would offer an answer. They didn’t. “What did I do?”

She frantically tapped the console, winking a small circular holo-screen to life. It was a live video feed, pointed directly below our jet. A sixty-foot steel tube spiralled and tumbled, shrinking into the distance. It was heading towards the island.

For a moment no one said anything. No one even breathed. Then a mushroom cloud of stone and earth exploded from near the pyramid’s base, blanketing the valley in an impenetrable fog.

Gavin stared into the screen. “Did...did it explode?” he whispered.

“I didn’t see an explosion or any fire,” I said, unable to avert my eyes. “The casing is supposed to be able to withstand a nuclear blast, coated in ten inches of graphene, so...yeah. I think it’s okay.”

“Okay?” Karin squeaked, throwing both her hands towards the screen (as if we weren’t already transfixed on the billowing cloud below). “You just bombed a building! With a crazy superhuman demi-god in it. Who is probably a bit pissed that you flattened his goddamn front porch and probably a bunch of his followers. How can this possibly be filed under ‘okay’?”

“When the dust settles put her down in the valley near the entrance of the pyramid. If Kenneth survived we need to have a chat.”

She gripped the yoke and tilted it downward, sending the jet into a vertical drop. “I don’t get paid enough for this shit,” she grumbled. “And I’m filing a formal complaint with HR.”

The fog lingered in the air when we made our landing. The earth had been split near the base of the pyramid; a long, cavernous fissure like the aftermath of an earthquake had been carved down the center of the valley. The silver cylinder jutted from the opening like an oversized tombstone, tilted slightly askew. It was still intact.

From the cockpit window I spotted a few of Kenneth’s followers who had emerged from the pyramid’s entrance, and were making their way down the steep staircase to get a closer look at the devastation. Their leader wouldn’t be far behind. 

The entrance ramp lowered and we stepped out into the dust. Karin coughed a few times, squinting at the dampening unit.

“Does it still work?” I asked.

My pilot closed her eyes, bringing her fingers to her temples. “Yup,” she shrugged. “The dampening unit is still...dampening. I got nothing.” Her eyes snapped open and she pointed towards the jet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna get to a safe altitude before bullets start flying. That thing might block superpowers but it ain’t gonna stop crazy.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Gavin said, reaching out towards her. “You’re
leaving
us here? What are we going to have for protection?”

Karin extended a hand towards Gavin and yanked her bomber jacket’s sleeve away from her wrist, exposing her com. When she said the words, “Full scan,” a red light appeared from the watch face, zig-zagging and spinning while it traced Gavin’s body.

“What is this supposed to do?” he asked.

“It’ll help with your armor,” she explained. “Just say the word.”

Gavin glanced at me quizzically, and then back at Karin. “Armor?”

“Yup,” she nodded. “That’s the word.”

A metallic buzz echoed from inside the jet, triggered by Gavin’s voice, and then the program initiated. He brushed the first nanobot off his chest as if it were a wasp about to sting. Then he gasped as the rest of the bots appeared in a singular metallic swarm, adhering to his arms, legs and torso in large clusters. The charcoal-grey armor solidified, encasing him in the most secure protective suit that my money could buy.

Gavin ran is fingers up and down the gauntlets, nodding in approval. “Damn...this is like
Tron
on steroids.”

I triggered my gunmetal blue swarm robotics suit as well. Inside the passenger bay there was a small storage container built into the floor, where I’d been storing a small cache of weapons for a rainy day. And today it was pouring. I handed Gavin a machine gun that he latched to the magnetic strip on his spine, and I locked a pair of handguns to my hips.

By the time we’d suited up, armed ourselves and Karin had lifted off, more than a thousand followers had gathered outside of the pyramid. They milled about, goggling at the giant cylinder that protruded from the gaping crevice, and pointed in my direction. Then the chatter hushed, and quickly fell silent. En masse the followers dropped to their knees, heads bowed, while The Living Eye strode past with Valeriya in tow. He was in full uniform: flowing cape, matching boots, gloves, and the skin-tight body suit that revealed every cut of his heavily muscled form. He looked even more powerful than the last time I’d seen him; his chest swollen, abdominals more defined, veins as thick as rope slicing across his massive biceps.

Gavin and I walked side by side across the valley floor, tracing along the side of the fissure. Motes of dust still hung in the air.

Once they were within earshot, Kenneth spread his hands wide, and shouted, “Hey buddy, you made it!” The grin stretched across his face was eerily similar to the one he used to flash me in his previous life; as if we were best friends, and he’d just invited me over for pizza and beer.

He breezed past the V2 dampening unit without even giving it a sidelong glance. Kenneth’s feigned confidence was like a tick buried under my skin. It was a sliver that I wanted to extract so badly I’d be willing to sever my pinky finger just to rid myself of it.

We marched towards each other until my fist collided squarely with his jaw line, rocking his head back. Then a left hook spun him, sending him to the ground.

Valeriya shrieked and Gavin grabbed my arms, yanking me back.

“How could you?” I screamed, struggling to free myself from Gavin’s grip. “How could you kill him? He had a family!”

Kenneth chuckled and staggered to his feet, running a gloved hand along his jaw. His tongue snaked across his top lip, tasting the coppery tang of his own blood. He raised his brow at the sensation. “Interesting...I can’t remember the last time I bled. Didn’t know I
could
anymore.” His eyes flicked to the massive steel cylinder. “I assume this giant tin can you dropped on my island is a CDU?”

“That’s right, asshole. Before long I’ll mass produce these new models, and have them
everywhere,
in every city around the world. They have a one-hundred mile radius and an independent power source that can last generations. Soon, everyone like you will be history.”

“Ambitious,” he said, looking the device up and down. “Naïve and short-sighted, but ambitious. Ultimately this will fail, just like every other security measure does.” He strode towards me with his hands clasped behind his back, seemingly unconcerned that I might strike again. Was he taunting me? Daring me? The tiny horizontal split on his lip was still bleeding, and a droplet rolled down his chin. “No deterrent in human history has ever been able to stop determined people,” he continued. “If they’re angry and motivated enough, nothing will get in their way. Prisons, war, the looming possibility of nuclear annihilation – they’re half-measures, at best. There is only one way to eradicate a group of radicals and ensure they never again pose a threat.”

I struggled to free myself but Gavin held firm, gauntlets clasped tight around my arms at the bicep, keeping me from reaching my weapons. “Are you out of your mind?! You really think you’re going to kill
every
single superhuman on the planet?”

He motioned back towards his followers who were gathered at the foot of the pyramid – a mob that had swollen to more than two thousand, with more pouring from the entrance. They stood at bay as if an invisible length of police tape were blocking them from a crime scene. “Not
just
me. I’m powerful, but I’m just a single person. I have a flock willing to give their lives for the cause. This is going to be a long, arduous task, but...”

“But at the end of the day you’re the last one standing,” I said, breathing heavy. “You want to be the
only
one left with powers.”

“It’s the safest way,” he said, mustering as much sincerity as he could.

I shook my head. “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”

He smiled again. The insincere flash of teeth that made me want to smash them down his throat. “The American government seems to think it’s the right thing to do. And so do my followers. Do
you
, Matthew Moxon, think you know better than everyone else?”

While listening to The Living Eye’s rhetoric I couldn’t help but feel as if I was no longer conversing with Kenneth Livitski at all. It had been like this ever since I’d first stepped into his throne room at the apex of his pyramid; the cape, the cowl, the impossibly muscular physique he’d crafted for himself – it was convincing, and at times evening intimidating, but it was all cosmetic. Window dressing. He was too lucid and calculated to have completely lost his mind, and somewhere, beneath the shiny new exterior he’d created using his considerable powers, he was the same person he’d always been. But there was something else at play. Whenever Valeriya was at his shoulder he was putting on a performance. Kenneth was now a walking, talking puppet that vaguely resembled the man I once knew, and was espousing propaganda-laced talking points that I’d come to expect from his pint-sized sidekick, not himself.

I was getting nowhere. I had to throw him a curveball and see if it would yield some different results. My eyes flicked towards Valeriya and back to him.

“Can we have a moment alone?” I asked.

His gaze never left mine while he took a moment to contemplate my request. “Go tend to our flock,” he said flatly.