Final Empire (34 page)

Valeriya’s crystal blue eyes widened, craning her neck upwards. “What?”

He didn’t look down. “Please don’t make me repeat myself.”

She spun and trudged back towards the army of gawking followers with all the enthusiasm of a teenager being forced to mow the lawn during a heat wave. I asked Gavin for some privacy as well and he reluctantly agreed, backing up to a distance of about a hundred paces before The Living Eye and I could continue our conversation.

And then something amazing happened: our first one-on-one conversation began, and I was suddenly speaking to Kenneth again – or at least a reasonable facsimile.

“Wake up, Mox!” he said, careful to keep his voice calibrated to a sensible level (the acoustics were surprisingly sharp between the craggy mountains that flanked us, amplifying each decibel). His tone had changed as well: he’d ditched the modulated, almost monotonous speech patterns and had adopted a more buoyant cadence, reminiscent of our time together before his coma. “Why do you think Darmaki stole Sergei Taktarov’s body? Just for shits and giggles? He knew that Russia’s Son was still being worshipped, even after his death. He wanted to be the only game in town.”

“Same as you.”

“Right!” he said excitedly, taking a step towards me. “Who would you rather have as the last man standing: me, or some deranged lunatic out in the desert who wants to control the world’s water supply? There are some dangerous powers out there and they’re all gunning for the top spot.”

I had to resist the urge to tear at my hair and scream myself hoarse. “So this is your idea of a better world: a fucking genocide?”

“Oh come on man,” he scoffed. “Don’t be such a goddamned drama queen. Valeriya lays it on thick for her simulcasts on the Darknet, but it’s not like we’re planning to wipe out
every
superhuman; just the ones who pose a threat.”

“And who decides who is and isn’t a threat, Kenneth? You? The US government?”

“Things are going to be better this way, Mox, can’t you see that? After that shit Darmaki pulled we’re
all
on the chopping block: me, Brynja, your pal Steve McGarrity – everybody. America isn’t going to let a bunch of powers just run rampant over cities whenever they want. After I thin out the herd, things will start going back to normal.”

“Superhumans are real, Kenneth. There is no more ‘normal’. There’s no going back.”

“But we can co-exist like this,” he said, sounding disconcertingly sincere. “I take out the main players and everyone can feel safe again. I’m the hero here, can’t you see that?”

“’Take them out?’ You sound like a crazy person! These are human beings you’re killing.”

“When I was in a coma things became
so
much clearer: life, death, that place I slipped into between both realms— it’s all the same. They’re just different universes, realities we bounce back and forth in between.” He turned to his flock of gawking followers at the base of the pyramid. “Some people are better off here, and some need to be sent to the next life. I’m just speeding up the natural order of things. I’m creating a balance.”

“You can’t play God, Kenneth.”

He turned towards me. “I’m just doing what you’ve been doing all along, buddy: making choices. You shot and killed Frost because he needed to die. Now you’re giving water to villages so people can live. You’ve taken life and now you’re giving it – you’re just using different tools to get the job done.”

My head was beginning to throb, and my words were coming out hollow, echoing inside my skull as if someone else were saying them. “That’s….that’s different…”

“Is it?”

I snatched the gun from my holster and jammed it out in his direction. My hand trembled. My vision blurred from the floating dust motes that stung my eyes (or maybe it was my lack of medication, or maybe it was both, I couldn’t be sure).

The sight of me with a gun in-hand was apparently hilarious. “You are I are
so
much alike,” Kenneth laughed. “It’s a shame you can’t see it.”

“Shut up,” I growled, wiping the dust from my eyes with the back of my free hand, keeping the gun aimed squarely at my target.

He jutted his thumb back over his shoulder at the CDU. “You dropped this thing from a jet in the hopes of flattening me, and you didn’t give a crap who got steamrolled in the process.”

“It was an accident!” I shouted. I gripped the pistol with both hands to steady it, but the barrel continued to vibrate.

“And accidents happen,” he shrugged. “I get it, buddy. Shit goes down and you can’t always control it. And sometimes, cool people die. Look at your friend Todd Dzobiak, for example. Yes, I admit, I took a little pleasure in stabbing every single one if his vital organs, mainly because I knew it would piss you off...but either way, he had
to go. He was going to expose me. Now that he’s out of the way we can move on and be a real team. You, me, Brynja…”

What. The. Crazy. Fuck.
Was I hallucinating? Hearing voices again? There was no possible way that the words I just heard actually came from Kenneth’s mouth.

“Think about it!” Kenneth said, beaming with excitement. “Now that you and I are even, we can put all this crap behind us.”

“We’re ‘even’ now?” I flamed. “Are you fucking kidding me? You murder my friend and frame an innocent man for it, and then tell me we’re
even
?”

“Yes,” he persisted, not at all rattled by the fact that I was still holding him at gunpoint. “We’re completely square. It’s
one
life – get over it already. Just join my team and be on the right side of history for a change. I need smart generals like you out in the field, not bureaucrats sitting in board rooms, and Brynja belongs with me, anyway.”

This was it. I was going to do what I came here for. I couldn’t hear one more second of this complete and utter madness. Every word that floated from his stupid mouth was like a toxic cloud that permeated my skin, infecting me as they coursed through my veins.

I lunged forward and jammed the barrel of my gun into Kenneth’s forehead, hard enough to leave a welt on his pale skin.

He grinned and leaned into it, pressing back. “This has been
really
exciting,” he laughed, “but Mox, c’mon, buddy. I
know
you’re not
going to kill me.”

I flicked the safety off with my thumb. It took three attempts but I eventually caught it.

He never flinched.

“You know what ‘buddy’,” I said through gritted teeth, “I don’t think you know
what
I’m capable of. You’re not a savior, or a messiah, or the next Sergei Taktarov – you’re a fucking
cancer
. If I don’t end you right now while I have the chance, you’re going to continue to spread.”

My finger was about to squeeze the trigger when Kenneth said, “You’re not going to kill me because of Brynja.”

I blinked hard. “She’ll get over it.”

“You’re not listening,” he said sharply, the buoyancy slipping from his tone. His words grew bolder and he adopted a deep baritone. “I’m not a cancer, Mox: I’m a nervous system. Some of my creations may act independently, but they’re still part of a larger whole. Part of
me.
You shoot me, and my extended body dies along with me.”

I pulled my gun away from his forehead. “You mean...I kill you, and Brynja...”

He nodded.

“You didn’t ‘create’ Brynja,” I said, rubbing a sheen of perspiration from my brow. “She existed before.”

“Correct. Her consciousness existed before I brought her back: her thoughts and desires and memories – everything that makes up who she is. But those are nothing more than non-local electrical impulses that can transfer from one carbon-based life form to another.”

I reeled, head spinning. “I-it’s
her
mind, but you
gave
her a new body…” I stammered. “You made one for her, manifested it. The same one she had in Arena Mode.” That’s why Brynja was no longer a perception, taking on the appearance of whoever observed her, and it was also why she couldn’t ghost anymore, becoming incorporeal. She’d been given a new physical form, and was walking around inside of Kenneth’s construct.

“You catch on quick.” He pointed towards the gun that I was now dangling loosely at my side. “You pull that trigger, Mox, and Brynja blinks out of existence.”

Even sleep deprived and desperately in need of medication, I could see clearly enough to notice his conviction. My failsafe fib detector was still functional. “You’re not lying.”

He folded his arms across his broad chest. “No, I’m not. And I’m disappointed in you...I can’t believe that after my generous invitation to be part of The Order, you were
actually
going to kill me.”

My knees buckled. Gavin must have seen me crumbling because he had raced to my side, propping me upright. “You...you’re a...” I trailed off, slurring my words. I was planning to say something like, ‘you’re never going to get away with this!’, or ‘I’ll be back!’, or something else I’d seen in an action movie, but my mouth wasn’t cooperating. My brain was grinding to a stop, and by body was quickly following suit.

“Look at you,” he said with a derisive laugh. “You’re
pathetic
. You’re falling to pieces, and before long you’ll be dead. I won’t have to listen to your sanctimonious bullshit ever again, and Brynja will come back to me – come
home,
where she belongs.” He waited a moment and sighed, shaking his head. “But you know what, who has the patience for all that? Why don’t I just kill you
right now and speed up the process?”

Kenneth lunged for my gun and Gavin cut him off with a sharp right cross, followed by a knee to the gut. The hydraulic boosters in his armor’s legs helped Gavin push off with a thunderous kick that struck Kenneth’s chest, blasting him backwards as if he’d been thrown from a moving car on the interstate.

Gavin put his finger to his ear and scanned the sky above. “Karin, we need a lift!” he shouted, his voice thin and panicked.

Valeriya had already signalled Kenneth’s followers, and they were stampeding across the valley floor. They were unarmed from the looks of them, but with that many people they didn’t need to be; with a horde that size we’d be swarmed, overwhelmed like victims in a zombie film and torn limb from limb.

The herd rumbled closer and Gavin drew his machine gun from his spine, pressing the stock to his shoulder, but before he had the chance to shoot we levitated, sailing towards the TT-100. The underbelly opened and we were magnetically pulled aboard, being dumped unceremoniously into the passenger bay.

My eyes fluttered, lids filled with lead. The next thing I knew I was face down, cheek pressed into the cold metallic floor, drowning in silence. The jet blinked away and I surrendered to the darkness, but not before one final thought drifted through my mind: it’s over...and The Living Eye won.

“Material wealth. Political influence. A flag surrounded by invisible borders. These are nothing more than constructs, illusions. They are the outdated currency of bankrupt culture that will soon cease to exist. Choose to live in the glory of the New World – the future – or burn in the ashes of the past. Join The Living Eye.”

- Herald of The Order
(Darknet Holoforum)

I had a nightmare.
Kenneth, on his knees, chest pressed against a wooden block. His hands were bound with a length of rope. He was blindfolded. With his head sagging, the back of his neck was exposed, tender skin visible between his cape and his hairline, where the nape of his neck met the base of his spine.

I readied my broadsword. The hilt was black as night and the blade forged from fire, the flames lapping at my knuckles as I redoubled my grip. As everyone I knew stood in silence and watched, I raised the weapon overhead. He begged. He pleaded. He explained that he’d been corrupted by power, influenced by the sycophants he’d surrounded himself with. He wanted to change but didn’t know how, and didn’t have anywhere to turn.

He asked for my help.

I refused.

With a streak of flame I sent his head rolling across the checkered tile floor.

And then I laughed.

I jolted awake, sitting upright. I thought it was morning…which morning, I wasn’t sure of. Beams of bright yellow light streaked through Fortress 18’s infirmary’s skylights, stinging my eyes. An IV dangled from my forearm and a thin metallic cord tethered a circular blue pad to my chest.

I disconnected myself, threw my legs over the side of the bed and located my jeans, runners and hoodie. Patting down my pockets I tried to locate my medication, and the events of the last twenty-four hours snapped into focus. The bar in Glasgow. Dropping a giant CDU on Kenneth’s island. And me, with gun drawn, a heartbeat away from executing someone at point blank range.

So much had happened so quickly that I’d forgotten to take my medication. It was the first time I’d missed a dosage in more than a year. My short-term memory was continuing to fade, so much so that what I’d done, just hours ago, was becoming blurred and distorted, confused with the events of the previous day. I should be in cryo by now.

I ambled down the narrow white corridor towards my bedroom. Rounding the corner I heard a second rhythmic pounding, which was completely independent from the pounding inside my head. It had a slightly disorienting effect, but as I managed to single out that one sound, it was recognizable as the sound of a treadmill. I opened one of the many unmarked doors in the fortress to find Peyton, cotton-candy pink hair pulled up into a ponytail, jogging along the moving rubber track. A holo-screen floated in front of her where she was watching a simulcast.

“You’re up early,” I said, still groggy. “And you own workout clothes, apparently.”

She glanced at me in mid-stride and yanked a transparent jellybean from her ear, which was blaring with the sound of some synthesized 80s pop tune. “Matty!” She slammed her palm into the treadmill’s control panel and it whirred to a stop. She dismounted and leaped into my arms, pelting my face with soft kisses.

“Hey, I missed you too,” I said weakly, turning my head to avoid some of the barrage. “Just go easy on me…I’m elderly and frail.”

“Ha, ha. Okay, ‘old man’, I don’t want you to break a hip.” She released her grip around my neck and stood back. “So Gavin said you went to the island to see Kenneth. How did it go? You two buddies again?” She asked with an innocent lilt to her voice, as if I’d been there for strictly diplomatic reasons. She knew nothing of the accidental bombing attempt and my tumor-induced rage blackout. Gavin, loyal as always, had said nothing.

“Um, there’s a lot to go over.” I scratched at the back of my hairline, glancing away. “I sort of pulled a gun on him, and sort of threatened to kill him.”

Her face twisted into a frown. “What does ‘sort of’ mean?”

A moment drifted by. “I totally did.”

“And…” she asked cautiously, “he’s
alive
, right?”

“Oh yeah, he’s fine,” I assured her. “I just think he might want to kill me a little bit, that’s all.”

She grabbed me by the shoulders. “Why do you
always
do these things alone? Why didn’t you wait until we could meet up and discuss this as a team?”

“I missed a couple doses of my meds, so I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. Plus I had your brother with me, so I had someone to watch my back.”

Her eyes widened. “Gavin was with you? You’ve been asleep for almost twenty-four hours and he said it was just dehydration.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Oh boy, he’s gonna get it…”

“Don’t be mad at Gav, he was just being loyal.”

“You almost died –
again –
and he didn’t feel the need to share it with me?”

I cupped her chin in my hands. “I’m
fine,
see? See the complete and utter fineness that is me? Nothing happened and we made it off the island without a scratch. But…”

“Darn, there’s a ‘but’—?”

I glanced over her shoulder at the simulcast she’d been watching while running on her treadmill. It was a news feed, which had since switched to an aerial shot of Kenneth’s island.

“Volume,” I shouted, and expanded the holoscreen to gain a better view.

A satellite cam showed helicopters buzzing overhead, attaching magnetic cables to the massive steel cylinder I’d dropped at the base of the pyramid. They yanked it from the fissure and took it over the ocean, dropping it miles off-shore.

“This happened just thirty minutes ago,” the Australian reporter announced, “The French government sent aid to remove a large piece of debris that had crashed into the Kerguelen Islands, just north of Antarctica. And now, we’ll go live to the site of the disaster where The Living Eye – a superhuman previously thought to have died in 2041’s original Arena Mode tournament in Manhattan – has taken up residence.”

I shook my head. “Taken up residence? That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

With the enormous dampening unit now several leagues below the surface of the South Indian Ocean, Kenneth’s powers had returned. And now that he’d been recharged, he was ready to put on a show. He clapped his hands, producing a wave of blue energy; a rippling band of brilliance that travelled out towards the gaping fissure I’d opened down the valley. With a small rumble the gap closed, like a wound being mended in fast-forward. The impressed ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from his followers were audible even from the media drone hovering far above, and the roar of applause quickly followed.

It was time for the grand finale. A wave of Kenneth’s hand produced thousands of bricks made of glowing blue energy that spun and swirled overhead, and repaired the damage to the base of his pyramid. His onlookers gasped and applauded again like spectators at a magic show. They were mesmerized.

The reporter lauded Kenneth for taking in so many of the homeless and downtrodden. They described him as a survivor. A leader. A source of inspiration. Not a single mention of certain words I’d have used to portray Kenneth, like ‘cult leader’, or, ‘maniac’, or ‘asshole’ (though I wasn’t sure the latter was permitted on most daytime simulcasts).

After replaying the Las Vegas-style theatrics, it flipped to a live feed in South Africa, where a gaunt, dark-skinned woman with almond shaped eyes appeared in the split-screen, about to board a cargo ship from Cape Town to the Desolation Islands. Tears streaked her hollowed out cheeks and she clutched a tightly swaddled newborn in her arms. She explained that her husband and eldest son had been killed when the rampaging giant stomped across the coastline, destroying their home and business. Now she and her daughter were homeless and penniless, with nowhere to turn. One of Kenneth’s recruiters had given her a one-way ticket to the island – she’d be provided for, clothed, and given a free place to stay. She sobbed that it was a miracle. ‘Dreams really to come true if you just believe.’

The wheels of propaganda were rolling. It didn’t take more than a touching anecdote, a few flashing lights and some cheap parlor tricks; suddenly the media were gulping down the Kool-Aid, just as Kenneth’s followers were. This wasn’t a news cast: this was a recruiting video for The Order of the Eye.

It was a pre-emptive strike on America’s part. Public Relations 101. It would only be a matter of time before word got out that the next generation of drone strikes wasn’t some scary new invisible bomber that sailed undetected over foreign countries, raining fire on evil-doers and innocent civilians alike – it was a man: a superhuman with the speed and strength to destroy anyone, anywhere, and for any reason. His charitable contributions were being placed front and center so he’d been revered as a savior and not a blunt instrument; terrorist groups had been using this tactic for decades, from Hezbollah to Hamas. And it was shockingly effective.

“He’s going to kill me,” I said flatly, still staring at the screen. “I don’t know when, or how, but he’s going to kill me.”

“Okay,” Peyton replied with more calmness in her voice than I’d expected. “How do you know that?”

“Because he told me he would.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Oh.”

“And I believed him.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“The fact that we’re cloaked here is the only thing we have going for us. He’s going to find us eventually. He won’t just bomb the fortress or try to destroy it, though – that would be too risky. He could hurt Brynja.”

“So he wants to kill you, but he wants to protect
her
—?”

“Something like that,” I said, taking a beat before I said something completely ridiculous, but I had to say it out loud. I had to hear myself say the words and taste them in my mouth.

“He wants her because he’s in love with her.”

Peyton crinkled her nose. “He’s in love with
Brynja?
Ew. Why?”

“Because I’m lovable as fuck.”

We never heard Brynja approach. We both turned to find her leaning against the doorframe wearing a powder-blue bikini, taking a generous bite from a polished red apple.

“Sorry,” I said, my face almost certainly reddening with embarrassment, “I was going to come and tell you all about what happened yesterday, it’s just that I’ve been sleeping.”

She blinked twice and took another bite. “Wow…so Kenneth has the hots for me? That’s the strangest thing I’ve heard today.”

“If you think
that’s
weird, then strap in. The next couple minutes are going to be a bumpy ride.”

I told Brynja everything.
That her physical body was a construct created by Kenneth, but that her mind, her memories, and even her soul (if such a thing existed) were simply along for the ride. Her physical body was gone. It had been blinked out of existence in the original Arena Mode tournament when an electricity-generating swordsman zapped her, and the vessel she was inhabiting now wasn’t really her own.

She took the news pretty well.

After vomiting, then going back to her room to shower and change into sweats, she agreed to meet me back in the conference room. We resumed our conversation. Peyton tagged along as well, and surprisingly Brynja didn’t seem to mind. She was probably just too shocked to complain.

We sat in the stark white room around the imposing oval table, spread out like notches on a clock. I was at twelve, Brynja sat at three and Peyton was at nine. No one spoke for a very long time.

“So as it turns out, I’m not real,” Brynja finally said. She was sagging into the wide leather conference room chair, legs pulled to her chest. Her voice was brittle. “But, in the plus column, a delusional superhuman demagogue is in love with me. So I have that going for me, which is nice.”

“You
are
real, and you’re staying that way,” I promised her. And I meant it. “We just need to stop Kenneth. He’s killed most of the Omega-level superhumans, and soon there won’t be anyone left powerful enough to stop him. That’s why we need to act fast.”

“Omega what?” Peyton asked.

“It’s a comic book term,” I confessed, drawing a tiny chuckle from Brynja. My vast, far-reaching nerdiness was enough to make her laugh under almost any circumstance. “The most powerful superhumans are the ones who can control the elements, or vast quantities of energy, or who are basically indestructible. Russia’s Son is dead, Darmaki is gone, and Kenneth has wiped out everyone else...at least every other Omega-level that we know of. He’s becoming the apex predator.”

Peyton offered a half-hearted shrug. “Okay, so what’s his next move?”

“Next? He continues to gain influence. As more and more followers come to his island he’ll feed off their belief. If what Darmaki told me was true, they’ll continue to amplify his powers, and before long…I don’t know. A week goes by? A month? I don’t even know if a CDU will be able to slow him down.”