Final Empire (19 page)

He shook his head, as if in embarrassment for me. “Botha, Lamore, take Mister Moxon. We are going to dispose of the rest.”

A blast exploded from overhead, pouring a shaft of daylight into the armory. Chunks of ceiling rained down as an electric blue streak burst into the room, as sudden and violent as a lighting strike. The streak trailed across my field of vision and the flames from Darmaki’s hands disappeared, snuffed out in a single puff like tiny candles on a birthday cake.

Darmaki dropped to his knees, hyperventilating. His eyes were transfixed on the cauterized stumps at the end of his forearms where his hands used to be. A horrified scream lodged in his throat. It would remain there for nearly a minute until the shock wore off.

Peyton regained consciousness and lurched to her feet. She started towards us and removed her helmet, examining it for a moment, goggling at the deep indent that was shaped like Dozer’s fist.

“Wow, these things can really take a beating,” she said.

“Peyton…” I called out, not turning around.

“Oh, I’m fine. Don’t bother with me. Once again, I get knocked on my butt, and no one even bothers to check if I’m okay. I’s not like I’m a—”

“PEYTON,” I shouted.

She tilted her head up and saw what the rest of us were staring at. Not Darmaki’s handless body, or Dozer lodged in the floor, or Botha and Lamore sprinting out the open doors like they’d just seen a ghost. Our focus was locked on the powerful, imposing figure who was familiar, and at the same time almost completely alien – nearly unrecognizable. His blue body suit, dark matching boots and gloves, the cowl and flowing cape; it had all changed since last we’d seen him. Even the emblem on his chest – the piercing, all-seeing eye – had taken on a more menacing design.

He stared at us with a vague sense of recognition, but nothing more. His gaze was a rush of cold wind that stung my skin. Judging by the expressions of everyone around me, they’d experienced the same chilling sensation.

It was Kenneth Livitski.

The Living Eye.

And I had no idea how he’d found us.

“When He tore back the curtains and exposed the truths of this world, my transformation was instantaneous. I was renewed; born again with virgin eyes. I shuffled loose my broken past like rusted shackles, clanging to the floor. I have never seen so clearly.”

- Herald of The Order
(Darknet Holoforum)

My real life has been difficult to separate from my dreams over the last two years.
My once razor-sharp memory had dulled considerably: recent events drifted out of my mind, day bled into night while I struggled to keep track of time, and, most disturbing, voices echoed inside my head. The pills kept some of the symptoms at bay, but medication could only do so much. But the vivid dreams – the
really
trippy, Sandman-meets-Adventure Time journeys through my subconscious mind like the one I was currently experiencing – were clearly labeled. There was no way I’d mistake this trip down the rabbit hole for an actual, physical experience.

I was falling, as I tended to do in my dreams. Spinning, spiraling through the darkness. The Liwa Desert opened beneath me, the sand swallowing me into an ever-deepening cavern. Objects cascaded all around me: books, chairs, shattered pieces of the palace above…and people. Screaming, panicked people clawing at the sand around them, as though they could climb their way out of a rushing waterfall if they just struggled hard enough. Their cries were drowned out by my own. The floor was rapidly approaching, with long fingers of flame reaching out towards us, lighting the tunnel as we dropped.

A blue lightning bolt streaked my vision. Kenneth had flown to my aid, or so I’d thought. He hovered at eye level, locking his eyes onto mine, never reaching out to me. I begged him to help me, tears streaking my face as the heat overwhelmed me, my skin charring, hair disintegrating. He just watched. It was a look of indifference, as if my body turning to cinder was of no great concern; he’d just as soon let me turn to ash as reach out for my arm, pulling me to safety. I was suddenly unconcerned with the fall, the heat, the muscle and sinew falling from my bones. I needed to know
why.
Why was he here? Why now? And why wouldn’t he just
say something
? I would embrace my fiery condemnation then and there if I could just get a goddamned answer…

My eyes snapped open before my remains could tumble into the abyss, just as I’d heard Peyton’s voice.

“Are you going to get out of bed today?” she called out as she emerged from the bathroom. A towel was wrapped around her chest and another twisted around her head, drying her wave of pink locks. She poked her thumb into the wall panel by the bathroom door, triggering the blinds to elevate. The flood of bright yellow sunlight might as well have been an atomic bomb going off in my retinas.

“Argh, what’s wrong with you! It’s only…” I squinted and cupped a hand over my wrist com. “Oh. Damn.”

Peyton padded over and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling a bottle of moisturizer from the end table. “Would you care to join me for lunch?” She squirted a glob of peppermint green goo into her hand, rubbing it up and down her arm. “I just need a few minutes here and I’m heading down to the common room. I heard the chefs are making pizza.”

I rolled over and yawned, burying my face in a pillow. “When did you get up?”

“Several hours ago,” she giggled. “You know, like around breakfast time? When humans typically wake up? I went to the gym, had a conference call with the board of directors, got your pardon approved by the DOJ, and then I helped out one of the maintenance workers with her golden retriever. The poor little guy had been throwing up all night.”

I bolted upright, eyes wide. “Wait –
what?
Why didn’t you come get me?”

“I didn’t know you’d be so interested in puppy barf.”

I continued to stare at her, eyebrows creased together.

“Ohh, the pardon,” she said, absently applying a fresh handful of lotion to her thigh with a long stroke. “Right. Well after we dropped Darmaki at the Department of Justice yesterday, they went right to work on him.”

“Work?” I asked, suspicious. “What does that mean, exactly?”

She shrugged. “I asked that exact same question.”

“And?”

“They told me not to ask. However they managed it, they were able to get a written confession out of Darmaki in like, twenty minutes.”

“How did he write it?” I asked. When Peyton looked confused I lifted my hand and made a chopping motion at my wrist.

“Oh…huh. Good question. They didn’t say…with his mouth, maybe? Or his toes?”

“But either way we’re in the clear?” I asked.

“Paperwork is going through right now,” she said brightly. “The President of the UAE gave his blessing and the feds raided his palace. With whatever they found, coupled with his confession, it was enough evidence for them to drop all charges against you. You’re not terribly popular after your escape in Manhattan and they have some follow up questions, from what they tell me it’s a done deal. No more running, and we can head back to America whenever we want.”

“All good news,” I said, rolling out of bed. I stood, stretched, and reached for my red hoodie and jeans, which were rumpled up on the floor.

“Planning on taking a shower at some point this week?” Peyton asked, glancing down at my clothes. “Or running those through a washing machine…or the incinerator?”

“Hey,” I chuckled. “I happen to like my clothes.”

“Uh huh,” she grumbled. “That was my other project this morning. I took the liberty of using the 3D printer to make you a new wardrobe.” Peyton crossed the bedroom and reached for the sliding glass doors across from our bed, pressing her finger into the reflective surface. They hissed open to reveal a closet filled top-to-bottom with freshly minted clothes: forty pairs of blue jeans, neatly folded and stacked, with a dozen identical red hoodies on hangers – along with an assortment of a hundred different comic book shirts. “I know you’re not big on the housekeeping, so I made you these. Just toss them in the garbage when you’re done with them.”

“Wow, this
is
impressive,” I said with a nod. “And incredibly wasteful.”

“So I was thinking, now that superhumans aren’t destroying the world and Sultan Darmaki is out of the picture: how about Paris?”

I riffled through the clothes on the rack until I located a character from ‘Watchmen’ splashed across a black t-shirt. “Sweet, Dr. Manhattan by Adam Hughes.” I pulled it over my head and gazed at the reflection in the mirror. I pulled a pair of jeans from the stack and stepped into one of the legs.

“Hello?” she repeated, slightly annoyed. “Paris?”

“Oh, right,” I replied, still staring into the mirror. “Paris. Sounds good.”

She dropped her towels, crossed the room and pulled jeans and a white tank top out of her dresser.

“Yeah, I was thinking it would be great for the ceremony…or at least the reception.”

With my jeans pulled to my knees I wobbled, toppling onto the carpeted floor.

“Wait, so…but, we’re not even…” I grumbled, flopping around like a goldfish that had leaped from its bowl and landed on a countertop. I finally pulled up my jeans and popped back to my feet just as she’d finished dressing.

“I know, I know,” she said, smiling sweetly. “It doesn’t have to be
now,
but it needs to be
sometime
in the future, right? We’re not kids anymore, Matty. Some long-term planning isn’t going to hurt. It just makes sense.”

Peyton was like a ninja when it came to dropping hints into conversations, and even better at steering me into specific answers. It’s not that she tried to conceal them – it was actually the opposite – but she could somehow Jedi her way right into my mind. It was nerve-racking. With a flash of teeth and a bat of her eyes I was suddenly a stammering teenage kid again, trying (and failing) to look cool when the hottest girl in school passed by my locker.

She made her way back towards me. Her fingers found their way through my dark hair, and her chest pressed to mine.

It was more than just nerves. It was my memory loss, and my condition,
and
the box that was in the basement of the fortress. It ate away at me, all of it. There was so much she needed to know. She thought there was going to be a future with me that might never happen, at least not for a while…

“I’ve been meaning to tell you about something,” I said, not much louder than a whisper.

“I can take a guess,” she said coolly, inching her hands down my back, fingers circling my waist. “You’re going to tell me that you can’t live without me, and that if I weren’t around, you don’t know what you’d do?” She grabbed the zipper on my jeans, yanking it up with a quick tug.

Damn you,
woman – you’re like Obi Wan and I’m a clueless Stormtrooper.

“Well, no…I mean,
yes,
actually. You’re right. But I was just thinking…aside from the fact that I feel like you just pulled up outside of the cantina at Mos Eisley in your landspeeder, and you’re waving your hand around, telling me that these aren’t the droids I’m looking for.”

She planted a wet kiss on my mouth. “I love it when you speak other languages. But I was thinking we could start learning one together…maybe French? Sometime after you pop the question…which might be…”

My wrist-com chimed and I let out a sigh of relief. Not a metaphorical one – an actual, physical exhalation of air, causing Peyton to narrow her eyes.

“
Sorry
.” She groaned. “My fault for trying to inject some romance into…this. Whatever ‘this’ is.”

I glanced at my beeping wrist. It was Detective Dzobiak. “I…I have to get it. I’ve been waiting for a call. It’s critical.”

She turned and walked towards her dresser, shaking her head. “It always is.”

I opened a holo-screen, washed out against the light pouring in through the windows. The reflection coming off the ocean was so powerful it blurred Dzobiak’s face into a haze – a ghost-like apparition floating above my wrist.

“Mox, my man!” His pearly grin was barely visible against the glare.

“So you heard my news?” I asked.

“I did, I did. Couldn’t be happier for you. Wouldn’t wanna be in Sultan Darmaki’s shoes right now…if he were wearing any shoes. Which won’t be allowed where he’s headed. And I heard you had something to do with his new accommodations?”

Before our trip to the Liwa Oasis I’d designed a containment unit that would remove atmospheric ions from the air – essentially a jail cell that made it impossible to create or control weather when you’re locked inside (an added piece of tech in addition to the built-in CDUs). I’d had one of my staff draw up a blueprint and send it anonymously to a few high-ranking suits at the DOJ. I guess they’d used the design. Of course I had no idea that Sultan would be a double amputee by the time he was locked in the cell, which would, possibly, nullify his abilities. Though you can never, ever, be too careful. Or plan too far ahead.

“Yeah, that was me,” I admitted. “How did you know I was the one who sent over the blueprint?”

“Call it a hunch,” he laughed. “I wasn’t sure until just now. I go with my gut.”

“That doesn’t sound very scientific,” I replied with a laugh of my own.

“Nah, not really, but it works. Not everything can be measured and quantified, my man. Some things just need to feel right.”

Peyton had overheard the conversation from across the room and turned towards me. “Sounds like some good advice, Matty.” The tone in her voice was back…it was the return of the Jedi.

“Peyton!” the detective called out, his eyes scanning the room around me. “Where’s my girl?”

She stepped into view and wrapped an arm around my waist, tilting her head towards mine. “Hey, Todd. Taking care of The Big Apple for us while we’re gone?”

“You know it.” He jutted a thumb in my direction, wedging his mouth to the side. “So when is Mox here gonna make an honest woman out of you? And am I gonna be attending a ceremony under the Eiffel Tower or not?”

I creased my brow into an uneasy frown. “Wait, how does
he
know about Paris? And why are you calling him ‘Todd’?”

Peyton and the detective exchanged knowing glances and shared a light chuckle. “What do you think I’m doing when you’re playing video games,” she asked, “or when you’re locked in one of your basement labs tinkering with gadgets? I’m a
human,
Matty – I interact with people. You know, chit-chat? Exchanging pleasantries?”

“I’m a human too,” I huffed. “I know how to interact with people.” My comment caused instant hilarity.

Dzobiak shook his head, wiping his eye. “Yeah, the jury is still out on that one. I don’t know another human being who works shit out as far in advance as you do, Mox.”

“In advance?” Peyton said, sobering a little. “Doubtful. Whenever I bring up the future Matty shuts down – like it’s physically painful to plan anything more than twenty-four hours in advance.”

The detective jerked his head back, the playful tone in his voice vanishing. “
Really?
Are we talking about the same Mox, here? Because this shit he pulled with The Living Eye was damn-near a year in the making.”

Peyton angled away from me, skin flushed. “Wait…what did you do? Did you
know
that Kenneth…that he’d show up at Darmaki’s palace?”

“No,
nothing
like that,” I was quick to clarify, “I mean, I thought there was a very slim chance, yes – but I knew he’d show up at
some
point. I’ve been tracking him.”