Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (31 page)

The R.A.M.s suddenly stop firing.

“Gazelle?” I shout out, praying that she’s alive and her radio is still working. “Gazelle!” I yell again.

There’s no answer.

The R.A.M.s’ dome heads swivel from side to side. As they scan for movement, it starts to rain. That isn’t smoke hanging over the courtyard. It’s a rain cloud!

The rain becomes a downpour, drenching everything in the courtyard. The pavement, the piles of rubble, the scattered debris, the toppled tree where I lost my hand, the wreckage of the transport that crashed from the sky, the R.A.M.s, the hundreds of scuttling Lobots, the deactivated carcasses of Crimson Combat Drones, and the bodies of the soldiers that fell fighting them all those hours ago. All of it is darkened and glistening with the sheen of the torrential rain. As quickly as it began, the rain stops, as if someone had turned a valve and cut off the water. The R.A.M.s are soaked and shiny, and water drips from their massive limbs as they trudge through the puddles. Their internal heat seems to have fogged the ballistic glass covering their glowing red eyes, and they look almost comically confused as they search the surroundings for targets. For the Saviors’ sakes, I’m glad the R.A.M.s’ eyesight has been impeded, but it’s funny to think that no one thought of putting window wipers on those highly advanced killing machines.

“Commander?” Gazelle’s voice whispers feebly. She coughs and retches, but it’s one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard, because she’s alive. Somewhere in the rubble under that roof, she’s alive.

“Gazelle!” I shout happily.

Suddenly, through Gazelle’s radio, I hear a deep, powerful, absolutely unmistakable echoing rumble. That’s not just a rain cloud floating fifty feet in the air. It’s a rippling, undulating, dark, and angry storm cloud. The rolling rumble above the courtyard is so loud that even two of the R.A.M.s swivel their heads up toward it. I watch from the camera as flickers of electric sparks dance throughout the entire length of the expansive cloud. The flashes fade away, back into the gloomy gray billows, and there’s a strange, peaceful moment of silence.

Then the entire courtyard lights up in a blinding blue-white flash as a thick bolt of lightning twists out of the cloud and strikes the ground with a thundering . . . BABOOM!

It sounds like a bomb has exploded. I hear Gazelle shriek in panic, and as the lightning connects with the wet pavement, hundreds of Lobots in a fifty-foot radius instantly burst like superheated kernels of popcorn. I gasp with joyful satisfaction when I suddenly see what a destructive and carefully designed weapon this really is. The rain wasn’t just a by-product of the storm cloud; it blanketed the battlefield with water to conduct the massive surge of electricity thrown down from above. And it worked brilliantly.

There’s another echoing boom of thunder, and I shudder with fright as more lightning bolts worm out from the cloud and strike a R.A.M. directly on its dome, scorching a steaming black burn mark directly onto the top of its green domed head. The massive thirty-foot-high robot shudders. Its huge arms flop dead at its sides, its red eyes blink out, and it slowly topples, crashing heavily on its back to the ground . . . deactivated.

My heart jumps excitedly. Yes! One down. I look toward the cloud, desperately hoping for another lucky strike just like that last one, but I shouldn’t have worried, because the storm cloud is just getting started.

There’s a deep boiling, rumbling vibration, and I see loose pebbles of masonry skittering from the edges of broken buildings as puddles ripple all over the courtyard. Then more flashes of light dance back and forth throughout the cloud, like blue and white fireworks. Then comes the silence, the ominous calm that seems to make time stretch like a rubber band until eventually . . . it snaps. White light explodes in my eyes, and I wince and gasp out loud as the very heavens seems to open up with blinding and furious anger. To my utter astonishment, the entire courtyard becomes a forest of electric trees as bolt after bolt of thick, arcing lightning begins striking everywhere I look.

The explosive, raging, booming noise is completely overwhelming and absolutely terrifying as strike after strike shakes the earth in rapid succession. Fifty, sixty, eighty, a hundred bolts of searing lightning scar the pavement. The few remaining intact windows in the surrounding buildings erupt from the shock waves of ionized air. My camera view trembles violently, but I can’t take my eyes away from the sheer fury unfolding in the courtyard as Lobots fizz and pop and explode everywhere.

Damaged frontages of buildings collapse from the force of the electric barrage as the lightning relentlessly pounds Sector A. One of the R.A.M.s simply stops in its tracks and stands rooted to one spot as it’s struck time and time again. Suddenly fire bursts from its eyes as boiling orange goop bubbles from all of its joints. The third and final R.A.M. is hit by what must be twenty consecutive lightning bolts, and its entire torso detonates into massive pieces of green shrapnel and glowing orange goo, leaving only its two legs standing on the pavement.

The number of lightning strikes quickly begins to decrease, but my heart is still pounding in my chest as the fading rumble wanes, the lightning strikes cease, and the flickering cloud begins to dissipate.

Through Gazelle’s radio, I can hear panting breaths. “Oh my god,” she whispers. “Oh my god.”

“Woohoooo!” a male voice shouts in the background. Commander Zero can’t speak, so it must be Jackdaw.

“Gazelle. Are you OK?” I shout.

She coughs again, and I can hear the concrete scrape of rubble being shifted. “I’m a little beaten up, but I’m OK,” she replies. “It’s just as well I’ve got a few spare legs at home.”

“I saw the whole thing through the camera feed. That was amazing,” I gasp.

“No, that was scary,” says Gazelle. “Now I know why weather-based weapons are illegal. That was only a little baby prototype that Commander Zero found in warehouse eighteen.”

“Gazelle, I need you to listen.”

“Sorry, Commander, I’m listening.”

“My mind has been trapped inside the mainframe.”

“You’re inside the computer?”

“Yes, Bit is in here, too. She’s attached to the computer core and is being forced to do something terrible. Everyone on the planet is going to die if we don’t stop my father’s plans.”

“What do you want us to do?” she asks without hesitation, just like I knew she would.

“The transports that landed in the courtyard. You said that two have already left, but three of them are still here?”

“Yes,” says Gazelle. “They’re at the other end, near Dome One.”

“Do they have weapons? Missiles?”

“Yeah, they do.”

“Then we need someone to pilot a transport and fly it to the rocket silos five miles beyond Dome Three. We need to blow the crap out of those silos. It’s the only way to stop my father.”

“The crews of those three transports are gone, Commander. Spiders got ’em, paralyzed them all. The spiders would’ve still been changing their brains when the lightning struck.”

“I have ten hours of pilot training,” Jackdaw says in the background. “Only light aircraft, and I’ve never actually flown anything, but hey, how hard could it be to pilot a fifteen-ton transport?” he says with nervous sarcasm.

“Then you have to try your best,” I say. “The fate of the world is relying on it.”

“Commander Zero says we’ll leave right away,” says Gazelle.

“Thank you. And please hurry.”

“What about you, Commander?” says Gazelle. “Your mind is in the computer, but where is your body? We can come and get you and—”

“It’s too late for me,” I reply. “Just blow up those silos.”

“But . . .”

“Go, all of you, please! I don’t know how much time we have left.”

“OK, Commander,” says Gazelle. “We’re on it. Oh, before I go, you might like to know that we found some kids from your school. They’re still here, in one of the transports. I can’t remember their names, but the blonde one is really mouthy.”

I smile. “You guys really are Saviors, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they call us. And I don’t care what you say, after we take out those silos, I’m coming to find you, Commander.”

“Gazelle, it’s too late for me, I’m—”

“I’ll see you soon, over and out,” chirps Gazelle, and she’s gone.

“Destroying the missile silos. That’s a very good plan,” says Sable’s voice.

I gasp with fright as I release my hands from the red and blue strips and see Sable floating right beside me, smiling warmly.

“You’re so resourceful!” she says proudly. “But there’s only one tiny flaw in your scheme.” She takes my hand and presses it against the blue strip. “You’re just a little too late.”

My view flashes into a camera positioned somewhere very high, overlooking a wide, flat field. And on that field, ten huge perfectly round holes are open and gaping at the sky.

Suddenly the view begins to shake violently, and the entire field lights up as one-hundred-foot-high plumes of fire erupt from each of the holes. The nose cones of ten huge rockets emerge one after another from the ten silos; their gigantic, long white cylindrical bodies come into view, and in a matter of seconds, all ten huge missiles have launched and are steadily climbing higher and higher into the clear and starry night sky.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” says Sable’s voice. “Once all ten are in their proper orbit positions, the quantum field can be activated. It’s so exciting! I’ve got to get back to Bettina, but I’ll leave you here to watch the rockets go. Work, work, work,” Sable sighs. “A sentient artificially intelligent supercomputer’s work is never done.” And with that she releases my hand, and the feeling of her presence gradually fades and then disappears.

My heart sinks lower than it ever has before. It’s done. This is happening. I tried, but I was too late. I feel like I want to cry, but inside this computer I don’t even have any tear ducts. That ironic fact only makes the overwhelming sorrow hurt even more. Through the camera’s view, I watch the rocket flares become dimmer and dimmer in the sky as they travel higher and higher.

I can’t watch anymore. I’m about to pull my hand away from the camera feed when I see something move at the bottom of my view. It looked like a shadow. In the lower left-hand corner of the camera feed, the location of this particular camera is typed in small white letters. It says “SOUTHERN TOWER,” and underneath those words is what appears to be some kind of white ledge. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but then I gasp as I see a shadow move across it again. A hand-shaped shadow. That ledge is the corner of a balcony, and someone is standing on that balcony.

If I had a heart, it would be pounding in my chest right now. Everyone has heard the urban legends. Richard Blackstone isn’t real; Richard Blackstone is computer generated; Richard Blackstone is real, but he’s a robot; Richard Blackstone is a crazy hermit who lives in an ivory tower. Someone once told me that urban legends always come from a grain of truth, but I think I may have just stumbled upon a giant boulder of it.

With my hand pressed firmly against the blue strip, I slowly turn my head to switch my view to the next nearest camera.

I’m looking down into a large, gently lit circular room. The floor is glossy black. There’s a plush, expensive-looking red-and-gold couch with matching armchairs. The wallpaper is red and gold, too, patterned with elaborate nineteenth-century-style graceful leafy designs, just like so many of the rooms at home in Blackstone Manor. There are small antique side tables with old-looking artifacts carefully placed on them. There’s a large, shiny varnished wooden globe of the world on an ornately turned stand, and behind the large wooden desk, toward the back of the room, is a leather-bound chair. But beyond the chair is a pair of French-style doors that open up into a small balcony. And standing on that balcony, with his back turned to the camera, is a man.

All I can tell from looking at his back is that he’s wearing a crisp white suit and his slicked hair is jet black. “I know you can see me,” he says. His voice is baritone and calm. “And hear me, too.”

My mind is absolutely reeling. It’s like seeing a celebrity on the street, which in a way, he is. He may be my father, but he’s never been a part of my life, and I’ve always struggled with thinking of him in that way. To me he’s a stranger, but he’s also the most famous man in the world. It’s so surreal that he’s standing right there, talking to
me
. It’s him. It really is Richard Blackstone.

“I can only imagine how many questions you must have. A lifetime’s worth, I suppose,” he says, looking out over the silos. “I haven’t been a typical father to you, have I? You’ve probably felt abandoned and unloved for most of your life, and I’m sorry for that. I truly am. But I’m afraid we must all make sacrifices. I certainly have; too many to count and many of those too painful to remember. You can probably tell by now from the particular shine of the floor that your mind can have a body in this room if you so wish. It’s up to you, but I hope you’ll choose to come here and meet me, face-to-face. Just touch the black band on the inside of the sphere, and you will be here.”

My father turns around, and he looks just like he does in the photograph with the silver frame that sits on the table of the first-floor landing at home. His black hair is neatly combed, his pencil-thin moustache is carefully groomed, his black collared shirt is spotless, and his scarlet-red tie is perfectly knotted at his neck and sits arrow straight on his chest. He walks across the room and looks up into the camera. “You can ask me anything,” he says. “And I hope to see you soon.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I pull my hand away from the wall and heave at the air. I may not have internal organs in here, but outside in the real world, my actual body must be close to cardiac arrest, because I think I’m going to explode out of my skin. I don’t know what to feel. It’s all too much! The dreams of days I’ve already lived, the memories stolen from me, the other side of my existence hidden from me, the countless lies and dark secrets. My mind is reeling, and everything that led up to this moment comes flooding back into my head all at once.

It all started a month ago on that moonlit rooftop in Paris, when Infinity took a bullet to the chest. The pendant that kept our two minds separated fractured, and the walls between us began to crumble. Ever since then, it isn’t just my mind that’s been shattered. My entire life has been completely torn open in the span of four short weeks, and nothing but death and destruction has been flooding out, consuming everything in its path.

And now, if all of that weren’t enough, here I am about to face the man that made me. The man who saved the world by abolishing natural disasters, banishing hunger, and eliminating poverty is going to take back all that he gave humanity. He’s going to allow my mother to exist in a living-dead hell of eternal torture, enslave my best friend, lock me in an electronic prison forever, and destroy the human race.

I look up and see a wide black strip revolving around the side of the sphere. I blink to it, and as I float in front of it, staring at it, I can feel Infinity’s rage combining with my own, boiling up through me from the depths of my soul. I clench my hands into tight, trembling fists. I’m gonna make him pay for everything he’s done.

I quickly draw my fist back beside my face and scream out in furious anger as I slam my knuckles into the dark, shimmering strip, and everything instantly goes completely pitch-black. Even though I can’t see, I can feel the quantum grains in every place in the facility. The largest concentration of them by far is in the three domes, but just behind the third and smallest dome at the far end of Sector C, I can sense the top of my father’s tower. I will myself toward it.

The darkness all around me slowly gives way to light, and the red-and-gold decor of my father’s office gradually blurs and then sharpens into view. I’m here, inside my father’s ivory tower. I look down at myself. I’m still wearing my black hooded top, gray jeans, and green sneakers, but I know that’s only because I think I am. I’m standing here, but I know it’s not real. I pull up my sleeve and pinch myself on the forearm. I don’t feel it at all. My real body may have been created in a lab and grown inside my mother, but at least it’s flesh and bone, with nerve endings and a heart that pumps my blood through its veins. This one is pure quantum grains, and I can see why Nanny Theresa didn’t allow Graham to become something like this. It’s empty. I’m a ceramic statue that can move and think.

“Welcome,” says my father.

I quickly look in the direction of his voice. He’s standing behind the large wooden desk on the other side of the room, and the rage I felt in the mainframe returns with astonishing fury, but it’s strange and artificial, like an emotion mimicked by a soulless husk that just happens to look like me.

“Isn’t this wonderful!” Sable’s voice echoes all around the room. “Father and daughter and me, her real mother. All finally reunited at last!”

“Leave us alone please, Sable,” says my father.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!” Sable says excitedly.

“You have duties to attend to. Leave us,” he says with a slightly sterner tone. “Don’t make me regret my decision to free you. I wish to talk to my daughter alone. Now leave us! I will not ask again!”

Silence.

My father waits for a moment, then he looks down at a computer slate on his desk and swipes his finger across its surface.

“She’s gone. I’m sorry about that. I’ve locked her out. She won’t disturb us again.”

I’m the one who’s disturbed to have the devil as a father. It makes no difference if the rage inside me is real or not; it feels genuine enough for me to do what I came here to do, and as long as I have a body, even this one, I can choke the breath out of him until he agrees to stop Project Infinity. Or better yet, I can cut him. With just the thought of having a knife in my hand, my whole forearm hisses as it changes shape into a two-foot-long glossy black blade. I glare directly at my father and quickly stride toward him.

He doesn’t look the least bit afraid as I storm across the room, and as I reach the desk, I quickly swing the blade at his neck, stopping it an inch away from the skin of his throat. He doesn’t even flinch.

“What’s the point of that?” he says, calmly glancing at the blade. “You can’t kill someone who is already dead.”

I frown at him and grit my teeth in anger. The bastard is a construct, too.

“Now we could chop each other’s limbs off and shatter each other’s heads all night long,” he says. “Or, you could have a seat.” Another leather-bound chair like his hisses up from the floor beside me. “And we could have our very first father-daughter chat.”

I glare at him. Then I slowly and grudgingly lower the blade. “When did you die?” I grunt at him.

“Would you like to sit?” he says, raising his eyebrows.

I look down at the chair, then I slowly lower and prop myself on the edge of the seat as my blade morphs back into an arm again.

“Four years ago,” my father says as he sits on his own chair. “I died in my sleep. The autopsy said it was a brain aneurysm. Luckily I used to download my consciousness on a weekly basis and store it for such an eventuality.”

“Why are you doing this?” I ask bluntly as I glare at him. “Project Infinity I mean. You don’t seem nearly as insane as everyone says you are.”

“Straight to the point. I like that,” he says. “Well it’s simple really. The human race is absolutely horrible.”

“That’s your answer?” I bark at him. “You’re going to kill ninety percent of all the people in the world, because you think they’re horrible?”

“Ninety-nine-point-five-nine-seven-eight-six percent. Give or take four- or five-tenths of a percent.”

“I take it back. You are insane,” I mutter.

“Am I? You’ve studied world history at school. Tell me, what was society like before my innovations?”

I don’t want to play his game, so I just flump back in the chair and glower at him.

“I’ll tell you,” he says. “By the first quarter of the twenty-first century, mankind had depleted resources to a point where forty-five percent of the global population were on the brink of starvation. They almost completely destroyed the natural environment, causing floods and typhoons so powerful that cities were being wiped from the earth, and droughts so severe that they forced millions of refugees to flee their own countries. Forty percent of all the fish in the oceans were driven to the brink of extinction, and more than a hundred unique land species became extinct every single day.”

“But you fixed all that,” I say.

“Most of it, I did. Richard Blackstone, the savior of the world, they said. And for a time, I was proud of what I had achieved. But I was a fool. I thought the world would be a better place if I could just solve the big problems. Then every man, woman, and child could band together and help each other to solve the smaller ones . . . united, together.

“But the human race doesn’t work like that. If you give a person everything they need, they will eventually begin to demand everything they
want
. War has become a game that people play, imagination has become whatever a search engine tells them to think, love is chosen by an algorithm, and the truth is whatever the one who shouts the loudest says it is. Society as it is was already dying, my daughter, and no matter how much I tried to help, I couldn’t change the traditions of greed and selfishness that had become ingrained in the minds of the people for so long.

“So now I’m just speeding up the process. I’m ending this empty society, and I will teach the new humanity the values that truly matter. I will finally give this planet the children it deserves and help the new human race be something so much greater. Mankind will be . . .
reborn
.”

“You’re not going to stop this, are you?”

“No.”

“There are good, decent people who want to change all the things you said are wrong about humanity, and their numbers are growing. They should be given the chance to try and make things right. They just need more time.”

“The bad far outweigh the good. Humanity’s time to change on their own has passed.”

“If you won’t stop it, I’m going to.”

My father leans back in his chair and leisurely cracks his knuckles. “I admire your tenacity. But there’s no way that you can stop it. Everything I’ve said about the human race is true, and you will be there to share in it. When you stand back and look at the big picture, at how wonderful the future is going to be, what is really so bad about the decision that I’ve made?”

I glare at Richard Blackstone, and my hate is pure. “There are so many things that are wrong with this decision,” I mutter. “But do you know what the worst thing of all is?”

My father leans forward on his desk and looks at me with a bemused expression. “And what would that be?”

“That
you
made it.”

I quickly stand, and a six-foot-long glossy black blade spears from my forearm, impaling my father right through the center of his forehead.

A grotesque, rasping sound croaks from his throat, and his fingers skitter and twitch on the desktop as his eyes roll back in his head and blood pours in thick rivulets down his face. His mouth drops open, and his final breath groans from his gaping lips as his eyelids droop half-closed. His body goes limp, and his hands go still as thick red droplets pitter-patter from his chin into a growing pool on his desk.

With one quick pull, I withdraw the blade, and his head thuds with a wet splat into the puddle of blood on the varnished wooden veneer.

“You cracked your knuckles, Dad,” I say, looking down at him. “And constructs don’t have knuckle bones to crack.”

With the tip of the blade, I push back the edge of his sleeve and confirm what I already knew. Wrapped around his wrist is a silver bracelet with a black diamond-shaped stone set into it. It’s a command module, used for controlling quantum grains.

My father lied about being dead, and he lied about not being able to stop Project Infinity. There is only one person who can end all of this, but in order to save everyone in the world, he will have to do the worst thing he could possibly imagine.

I close my eyes and sink into the floor, willing my way through the quantum darkness. When I open my eyes again, I’m back inside the massive multicolored sphere surrounding the core. And waiting for me is a floating mass of purple smoke.

Immediately on guard, I stare at the formless Sable, preparing myself to run, but where can I go? She has ultimate power inside here. I can’t get out, and there’s nowhere in the systems of this facility where I can hide that she won’t find me.

With my hands raised defensively before me, I’m still desperately racking my mind for any slim hope of escape when the smoke coalesces into a very worried-looking Sable.

“He’s mad at me, isn’t he?” she says, wringing her hands. “It’s OK, you can tell me. Is he mad? Please don’t say he’s angry at me. I couldn’t take that, I really couldn’t,” she babbles.

Considering the fact that I just killed my own father and the fate of the world is hanging in the balance, the only thing I feel at this very moment is an overwhelming sense of relief. Sable doesn’t know, and I suddenly see a chance to seize an opportunity.

“He is very mad at you, Sable,” I murmur, trying my best to look disappointed in her.

She flinches like she’s been stung by a bee, and her brow furrows into deep creases. “Maybe I should go and apologize,” she says as she reaches toward the shimmering black strip.

“No!” I bark as I grab her hand. “He wants to be left alone right now. He said that I should tell you to get back to work and you’re not to disturb him until he calls for you.”

Sable looks brokenhearted. “He must be very mad at me.”

“He is, but my father and I had a very good talk, and . . . and he convinced me that Project Infinity is the best thing for everyone.”

“Oh, my sweet darling,” Sable says, beaming at me. “That is the most wonderful news. I just knew you two would work things out.”

“Yes, we did,” I reply. “Now . . . um, seeing as this is going to be my new home, my father said that I could look around, and y’know . . . get to know the place.”

“That is a fantastic idea!” Sable says, clapping her hands excitedly. “We can go together!”

“No, he needs you back inside the core.” I quickly quash the idea.

Sable’s face drops. “But I’d rather be with you.”

“That may be, but . . . Project Infinity is very important to my father, and you don’t want him to put you away again, do you?”

“No,” she grumbles as she rolls her blank white eyes. “I do have to get back to the core, I suppose. The first satellites have just come online, after all.”

Panic suddenly surges through me. “Already?”

Sable grins and nods enthusiastically. “But tomorrow it’ll be just you and me!” she says as she takes my hands and squeezes them tightly. “I’ll show you all the best places in here. We really do have forever to be together, my darling, so you go ahead, go and play, and I’ll see you bright and early in the morning.” Then, with another cheerful smile, Sable dissolves into smoke. In a purple flash of light, she zips away, back into the core.

I wait a moment to make sure she’s really gone, then I quickly look at Bit all the way over by the core. In a flash, I’m floating in front of her. “Bit?” I whisper.

“Finn,” she says, again in that horrible, dreamy robotic-toned voice.

“Bit, please, please stop what you’re doing. Billions of people are going to die.”

“Death for eternal life, Finn.”

“Bettina! Listen to me. Brody is going to die out there! Don’t you care?”

“Eternal life, Finn. It’s already begun,” she murmurs.