Final Empire (37 page)

Fortress 18’s infirmary was white and metallic and sterile
, with the same hermetically sealed look and feel as every other room in this bland, paper-white stronghold. Brynja was surprisingly calm. She sat perfectly still on a gurney with an IV in her forearm, held in place with a small length of surgical tape. Only I’d accompanied her. Everyone else waited in the conference room.

The nurse had transferred Kenneth’s blood into a rubbery bag that hung from a hook on the wall, and he was about to begin the drip. He tugged down his light blue procedure mask and smiled brightly, offsetting the otherwise somber mood in the room.

“Everyone set?” he beamed.

“Do me a favor,” Brynja said. “Dial it back about nine thousand percent.”

“Absolutely,” he said with an enthusiastic thumbs up, smile widening.

She shook her head.

The nurse (whose tiny silver nametag read ‘Wu’) reached for the nozzle on the IV’s hose line, index finger primed to flip the switch and begin the drip. Brynja lunged out and snatched his hand.

“Wait.” She stared at me for a long second. I reached out and took her hand. Then she asked me something telepathically. I was sure it wasn’t a voice inside my own head because her eyes conveyed the same energy as I gazed into them; I was reading subtitles and listening to the audio at the same time in perfect sync.

I leaned in and kissed her twice. Once on the cheek, and again on the forehead. When I drew back her eyes were closed.

“You already know the answer,” I whispered.

Nurse Wu coughed, loud and obvious, bringing a fist to his mouth. “Um, I don’t wanna rush you two, but my shift is kinda already over, and I heard Aletta was making Purple Zebras downstairs. So if we could just move this along…”

“OH MY GOD CAN WE HAVE A MOMENT?” Brynja shouted, causing Wu to leap back a step. After a loud groan she reached out and grabbed the hose line, flicked the nozzle, and released the drip. “He’s right,” she sighed. “Might as well get this show on the road.”

It took a moment for the drip to begin.

The nurse glanced at his com. “Now that we’re technically done here…” he said, pointing towards the door.

“Yes, please go.” I said, not looking in his direction. I was staring at the river of red filling the transparent hose, inching down towards Brynja’s vein.

“Are you sure?” I heard him ask.

“YES. GO.”

“Everyone is so shouty today,” I heard Wu mutter as he left.

The infirmary door whooshed closed. For whatever reason I’d chosen that exact moment to turn my head, watching the door latch into place.

When I turned back, Brynja was gone.

“Brynja?” I shouted, racing around the infirmary.
It was small – just three crisply laundered hospital beds, some cabinets filled with supplies and a small computer terminal with a VR rig. I actually didn’t even know where I was looking. Had she ghosted already? Disappeared and fallen through the floor? Or did she blink out of existence all together? Fuck, what had I done? I’d just injected her with blood I’d bought from a doctor who had broken several ethics laws in obtaining and selling it. Okay, I had verified it as superhuman, and I was ninety-nine point nine percent sure it was Kenneth’s – but what if it wasn’t? Fuck shit damn fuck, what had I done?!

“Language, language,” I heard a voice call out in my head. “Are your thoughts always this vulgar?”

I looked up at the buzzing fluorescent lights, eyes trailing along the exposed piping that had been painted white with exposed red daisy wheel valves jutting from them. Where was that voice coming from? It sounded like…

“You’re not hallucinating, if that’s what you’re thinking,” the voice echoed.

Then she appeared. Not with a blast of light or energy or lightning or fanfare of any kind. It was just a blip. One second, nothing. The next moment, silently, there she was.

“Well, I say
if
that’s what you were thinking, but really, what kind of mind-reader would I be if I was guessing, right?”

Her porcelain skin, glowing blue eyes and matching hair were intact, but as for the rest of her…the word ‘surreal’ didn’t even cover it.

Her armor was translucent, continually shifting flecks of purple as if it was being shot through with sunlight. I couldn’t tell if it was made of metal or glass. Sharp spires jutted angrily from her shoulders and from the toes of her boots, and her gauntlets were layered with the same otherworldly material. She was shrouded in an ankle-length cloak that flapped regally behind her, blown by a wind that didn’t exist. It revealed an inner lining that crackled with electrical impulses.

At her side was a snarling blue manticore. His white mane billowed with the same non-existent wind, his ragged dragon wings folded to his back, and his scorpion tail swayed threateningly, the stinger dripping with a single glob of venom. He was the size of a stallion.

She absently stroked Melvin’s mane and his snarling subsided. He came to heel like a lapdog.

“I’m not a ghost anymore,” she said. “I’m an architect.”

Whatever she’d become (or ascended to?) was unlike anything I could have imagined. She could bend reality to her will, just like Kenneth; creating clothing and armor and even a living creature. And she was glorious.

“Your inner monologue is like a Harlequin Romance novel right now,” she chuckled. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little embarrassed for you.”

“Sorry, I’m just…wow.” I goggled at her. I couldn’t help it.

“Don’t let your girlfriend come in here and catch you perving on me.”

“NO, I mean…it’s just…” her breasts were nearly exposed, covered perilously by just the edges of her cloak, and the rest of the armor revealed a very liberal amount of thigh and midriff. It was hard not to ogle.

“It’s no big deal,” she sighed. “Get over it.”

“I know, you’re European. You sunbathe topless.”

Brynja walked towards me with Melvin in tow, her metal (or glass?) boots rapping thunderously across the durasteel floor.

She smiled. “Damn right I do.” Her palm sprang open and a glowing purple rod appeared, topped with a basketball-sized head. It was a mace – a blunt medieval weapon used for flattening whatever it collided with (not the most elegant of instruments, but an effective one for anyone powerful enough to wield it). Spikes appeared from the round head, telescoping outward as if they were growing organically.

I marveled at the weapon, but my mind was still stuck on her wardrobe.

“Now are we gonna stand here and talk about my tits all afternoon, or are we going to stuff Kenneth into a freezer?”

Cameron Frost’s naming conventions aside,
Fortress 18’s design presented strategic difficulties when setting up a military defense.

It was built into a mountain range; seven rocky fingers that reached out of the South China Sea, each topped with part of the compound (some were stubby and compact, just eighty feet high at their peak, and some were long and gangly, stretching five times that height). The fingertips were all topped with platforms. There was a pair of runways serving dozens of aircraft, although most had vertical take-off capabilities. The rest were mounted with multi-layered bronze domes, designed like serrated sea shells, which served as entranceways to the hollowed-out interiors of the mountains. But none were designed for combat. This was a research and development facility, nothing more. It was cloaked with the most state-of-the-art scrambling equipment ever designed, and was invisible to all types of radar and satellite (and, apparently, even superhuman detection). When no one can find you, there isn’t much need for heavy artillery. In retrospect, it couldn’t have hurt.

I stood on the primary platform: a wide tarmac that could have housed three aircraft carriers sitting end-to-end. I walked to the edge, glancing ten stories down. The water reflected the sharp yellow sun, and was as placid as a lake. Typically the ocean waves would slam into the base of the barnacled mountain where the rock face met the waterline, spraying the edge of the tarmac with a salty mist. Not today. There was an eerie, ominous stillness all around. The air, the water…it was the calm before the proverbial storm, and everyone could feel it.

I lifted my wrist to my mouth. “Helmet,” I commanded, and my swarm robotics obeyed. A moment later I was wearing a full helmet with a dark tinted visor, blocking out the blinding glare of the South Pacific sun.

The plan was set. In the TT-100 Karin hovered invisibly in the cloudless sky several miles off-coast. When the time was right she’d land, and the cryogenics unit that was magnetically latched to the underbelly would be open, ready for its new occupant. Now we just needed Kenneth unconscious – or sedated enough to jam him inside.

Brynja and McGarrity emerged from the fortress’ main entrance at my back. She had reverted to her normal clothing: the cropped tank top, ripped jean shorts and spiked combat boots that I’d seen her wearing when we’d first met. She constructed the outfit with a simple thought, and like magic it had appeared. Melvin was of course out of sight (precisely where, I didn’t know, but Brynja assured me he’d materialize ‘at the right moment’, whenever that was). If she was an architect she was theoretically powerful enough to match Kenneth punch for punch, blow for blow, construct for construct, but I didn’t want it to come to that. I’d hoped she could phase into him and administer the sedative concealed in her palm before he’d had a chance to fight back.

McGarrity was in his jeans and t-shirt, as per usual, and was taking a selfie with his wrist com.

Brynja slapped his shoulder. “Dude, really?”

“This is for my new book jacket,” he said, swatting her away as he continued to snap pictures. “This is going to be the most epic battle of all time – maybe even epic-er than Fortress 23. If I don’t record this for posterity, who will?”

“London,” I barked into my com. “Shut down all cloaking on Fortress 18.”

“Oh, are you sure?” a friendly Scottish voice replied; the ever-buoyant octogenarian who was programmed as my AI, and she sounded concerned. “If we do that, Mister Moxon, then people will know where we are.
Bad
people.”

“I’m aware,” I said firmly. “Shut it down. Now.”

“Yes sir! I can detect by your vocal change in tone and pitch that you’ve been angered. I would never dare to question your genius, or disobey a command. I was merely suggesting that given the current state of affairs with—”

“Duly noted,” I said with even less patience. “Just do it.”

And like that the cloak came down.

I looked skyward and waited, and like watching water boil, it was taking forever. Brynja paced, McGarrity continued to snap photos of himself. Surely Kenneth had been monitoring the globe; at this point he could feel a disruption, and sense when our cloaking went offline. Brynja assured me that he’d ‘feel’ a band of energy snapping off when I cut the cloaking, and I believed her.

Another moment drifted by. And then another. I spoke to Peyton and Gavin on my com; they were armored and armed to the teeth, sitting securely in the TT-100’s passenger bay, and they were monitoring the skies from two different sat-cams (I’d sent the rest of the staff back to their respective homes, hoping that after this was all said and done, they’d still have hometowns left).

“Incoming,” Gavin suddenly shouted, and that’s all he had time to say.

The next few moments unfolded in a blur, like they had in Switzerland. The first part of the offensive barrage was one I’d fully expected: it was a silver projectile the shape of a bullet but the size of an eighteen-wheel truck, spiraling overhead. We didn’t have time to move. Steve, Brynja and I gawked, staring upward as it draped us in shadow, continued out over the ocean, and dropped. It sunk harmlessly into the water and bellowed, like the sound I’d imagine a whale might make when being impaled by a harpoon. The device sent out an EMP, crippling every mechanical device in the immediate area. It was necessary for Kenneth to know his powers would be functional when he arrived, and it was why I’d sent Karin miles offshore with the TT-100, leaving it unaffected and out of range.

A heartbeat later and The Living Eye was standing a hundred feet away in full costume: cape, cowl, and his eye logo emblazoning his chest, glowing with a brilliance that rivaled even the tropical sun.

“Brynja,” he called out, spreading his hands wide. “I’ve finally caught up with you. Have you reconsidered my offer?” His tone was breezy, lips curled softly at the edges.

“Your offer?” she blurted out a caustic little laugh that instantly caused his face to crumble. “To what, join you and your cult?”

“To come home,” he said firmly.

“I already have a home.” Her voice was growing bolder, words dripping with venom – her petulance was mirroring his.

Shit.
This wasn’t the plan.

“This is your last chance, Brynja. I will not make the offer again.” He sounded like an irritated parent, not even attempting to maintain his composure. It was almost embarrassing.

“Or what? You’ll kill me? Kill Mox and McGarrity and everyone else? Go ahead – I’ve got nothing left to live for, anyway. You’ve stripped
everything
from me.”

McGarrity’s face twisted into a mask of confusion, and as much as I’d tried to maintain my poker face I knew I was failing. Brynja was going way, way off-script here. We’d discussed her making some small talk, turning on me, and then sauntering towards a distracted Kenneth, where she’d be close enough to administer the pill.
This
was pure improv…or it was something else. She was running on emotion and it was getting away from her; fists clenched, the heat rising in her face – she was losing it. If she had an alternate plan in mind I didn’t know what it was, and this sure as hell wasn’t the time to flip the script
.

“I’ve done nothing but
give
, can’t you see that?” Kenneth’s voice cracked with emotion; a single thread of humanity barely audible in his words. “People needed guidance and I provided it. The world needed someone to look up to and I became that.
You
needed a physical body – a host for your consciousness – and I crafted you one. I’m exhausted from being everything to everyone.”

“Are you kidding me?” she shouted, stomping towards him. “You gave me this body because you wanted me to be your plaything! You stripped me of my ghosting ability because it scared you, and you turned my blood into some sort of tracking device so you could keep tabs. I’m not a fucking pet, Kenneth – you don’t just get to neuter me and train me and put me on a leash.”

“You didn’t
like
your ghosting ability!” he pleaded.

“It doesn’t matter what you thought I wanted or didn’t want – it wasn’t yours to take away. Can’t you see that?”

Kenneth looked past her, eyes ablaze. “He’s brainwashing you, can’t
you
see that?”

“Mox did
nothing
. I can think for myself, and if I’d wanted to be with you, I would’ve been. I barely knew you in Arena Mode, Kenneth – you were air lifted out of the battle zone and hospitalized before I had the chance to even see the real you.”

“Because of him!” he shouted wildly, jamming an accusatory finger in my direction. “You have no idea what it was like – what I went through in that coma
he
put me in. I was trapped in a prison of pure darkness. I was fully aware, surrounded by sounds and the voices of those who came and went, but I couldn’t call out to them. Each minute lasted an hour. Each day felt like a year. I heard the sobs of my mother, pleading to a higher power that I be freed from my confines. Of course her prayers went unanswered, and I listened as she slowly unraveled, one plea at a time. And that wasn’t even the worst I had to endure: the doctors came and went, unsure of how to diagnose a superhuman. One afternoon a pair of interns mused aloud that it would be fantastic if I’d die so they could slice me open, tearing out my insides to satisfy their curiosity. Dissecting me like a fucking frog in a high school science class.”

“Well boo fucking hoo,” McGarrity said in a mocking sing-song voice, and everyone turned to face him. “So you were scared of the dark and heard some things that made you sad. Welcome to being an adult, asshole. You’re gonna experience things that rub you the wrong way once in a while. Everything you see and read and hear isn’t going to feel great but we all just man up and move on – it’s called ‘life’. You don’t get to claim innocence and become a sociopath because you can’t deal with your own emotions.”

Brynja cleared her throat. “Ahem.”

“Sorry,” McGarrity clarified. “Man or
woman
up.”

“Thank you.”

Kenneth had clearly heard enough. He charged. “Stay out of this you son of a bitch!” A construct of brilliant blue energy appeared in his hands: a broadsword, three feet long, and it was a near-replica of McGarrity’s. Steve’s own weapon sparked to life, a vicious yellow blade forged from pure sunlight, just in time to make a horizontal block. Their swords collided. Brynja and I scurried to safety, watching the battle unfold.

I don’t know if Kenneth had been practicing swordplay but his movements were precise; highly polished and fluid, as if he were wielding an elegant rapier, and not a two-handed blade.

McGarrity blocked and parried each oncoming strike with equal precision. There was no clatter of steel on steel, but when the weapons of energy collided they rippled and hummed like massive power generators, casting off waves of heat and blinding flashes of light. The collisions intensified and they both seemed to gain momentum with each passing stroke, neither seeming to tire.

The next sequence happened so swiftly it almost appeared choreographed: a low, arcing swing from McGarrity’s sword was aiming to take Kenneth out at the knees, but he leapt. The glowing blade dragged along the tarmac, carving a nasty scar that smoldered and coughed up bright orange embers. Before McGarrity could reset his position Kenneth’s blade found it’s mark, the tip grazing his exposed bicep. It was more than enough.

McGarrity screamed and clutched his arm, oozing blood, his sword now nowhere to be found. It had disappeared the moment he’d been sliced, and his concentration broken.

This wasn’t the distraction I was hoping for but it would have to do.

When Kenneth raised his sword overhead and prepared to deliver the coup de grâce, Brynja’s hand ghosted into his throat and retracted. He turned and swung on instinct, his sword passing harmlessly through her.

Kenneth wobbled, eyes fluttering. The pill had dissolved instantly and was already coursing through his bloodstream, slowing his motor skills.

“Youuuuuu…” he slurred, lurching towards me. “You did this. You ruined my life!”

He swung a gloved fist like a punch-drunk boxer and I swayed, easily avoiding his looping left hook.

I retaliated with a stiff right cross, tattooing his exposed jaw with my metallic gauntlet. The shot buckled his knees and sent him into a heap, crumbled at my feet.

“And
that’s
what you get when you…” I trailed off a moment. “Shit. I got nothing.”

McGarrity stumbled towards me, hand tightly clutching his bicep. “That’s okay,” he winced. “Not every action sequence needs to end with a cool one-liner.” It was bleeding profusely; his entire forearm and the right leg of his jeans were stained with crimson, and even his white Nike’s had been spattered red. Kenneth’s blade must have nicked an artery.

“You need a doctor,” I told him. “But first we need to get Kenneth in the freezer. Karin,” I shouted into my com. “Can you hear me? We need you, STAT. Open the box.”

“On my way, boss,”
she replied, and the TT-100 immediately burst into view, making its approach.

The steel cryogenic cylinder that was tethered to the underbelly was clearly visible as well, until it wasn’t. Something from the ocean had snaked up and grabbed it, tore it off and crushed it like a tin can. It dragged the twisted remains underwater.