Synarchy Book 2: The Ascension (37 page)

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December 20, 2012 - 10:44 PM

Switzerland

CERN

Being teleported really fucked with
one’s sense of vertigo, Lucien realized as he and his team appeared
in the snow covered lawn in front of the CERN building. Lucien took
a quick second to get his bearings, then pressed the button on his
stopwatch. They had ten minutes to get inside the building, and arm
the ELMINT. Pulling out his gun, Lucien motioned for his team to
follow, and they sprinted past several heavily armed, patrolling
security squads, literally unseen.

The building that housed the ELMINT was
dome shaped and sat behind the main CERN laboratory. Three armed
guards stood in front of the door, smoking and chatting. The Cadre
knocked them out and took their radios.

“
You two, wait outside.
Nobody gets in here until we arm it. You two, with me,” Lucien
whispered. Taking a deep breath, Lucien slowly pushed the door to
the building open, just enough that he could slide through it.
ELMINT resembled a giant telescope. It had a parabolic shaped head
that sat on top of a circular tower made of metal with wires
wrapped around pipes of steel. The giant diamond shaped crystal was
enclosed in a glass container in the center. It stretched up three
levels and a steel platform slinkied around it. On the second
level, two separate rows of computer terminals took up space. A
dozen men and women in white lab coats worked in the area,
obviously getting ready for the night’s events. Two guards stood at
the lower level, and Lucien knocked them both out with the strike
of his gun to the back of their heads. Lucien’s men shot the other
two guards. It was only then that the scientists realized something
was wrong. Pressing a button on his thermoptic device, Lucien
flickered into sight, grabbed one of the scientists by the back of
his lab coat, and pushed him towards the door, shouting at the rest
and wildly brandishing his gun.

“
Step away from the
terminals! You all up there, ground floor, right now! Right fucking
now or I’ll put a bullet in you! Move! Move!” Academics, not
soldiers, the scientists released startled sounds, threw up their
hands, and began filing down the metal staircase to the waiting
Cadre.

“
Keep ’em quiet,” Lucien
said to his team, and went sprinting up to the third floor. He
pressed a button on the railing, and a plank stretched out over to
the ELMINT, stopping in front of the crystal. Lucien jogged across
it, then snapped open the keypad. The keys were marked with
symbols—the Anunnaki language—not numbers. He paused to recall the
code, and then typed it in.

A green light flashed, and the glass
panel surrounding the crystal opened. Lucien swung his pack around
and pulled out a brick of C-4.

“
Don’t move,
Lucien.”

Lucien froze. From below, he heard
warning shouts, then gunfire. Goddammit, he thought. Frowning, he
turned around to face a coldly triumphant Amadeo.

“
Walk forward, slowly,”
Amadeo ordered.

Narrowing his eyes, Lucien obeyed,
walking across the plank to face his cousin, who backed up a step.
“Set them to the side, right there.” Amadeo motioned with tilt of
his head. “Slowly.”

Lucien hesitated. He could see the
rapidly declining numbers on his stopwatch. His mind worked
frantically for a way out as he bent down and set both the
explosive and detonator on the ground where Amadeo had
indicated.

“
Guns, too,” Amadeo said,
evenly.

Gritting his teeth, Lucien pulled out
both his guns and set them on the ground. Amadeo walked forward,
keeping his gaze on Lucien as he kicked the guns behind him. Then,
Amadeo set his gun down on the railing. “I’m really going to enjoy
this.” Without hesitating, he punched Lucien in the face. Lucien
stumbled backwards, and Amadeo advanced with a quick assault of his
fists. Lucien tasted blood on the third punch. The fourth made his
vision swim and the world lurch beneath his feet.

C’mon, Lucien, my eighty
year old sister can block a punch better than
that
. Forcing himself to focus, when Amadeo
swung again, Lucien smacked his cousin’s wrist, then slammed his
forearm into Amadeo’s mouth. Amadeo’s head jerked back and Lucien
clapped his hands against Amadeo's ears, disorienting him. Amadeo
grabbed at his head, and Lucien kicked the tender spot of Amadeo’s
knee. Amadeo gave a shout, and as he fell Lucien punched Amadeo
near his temple. Lucien watched him collapse, just as his stopwatch
began frantically beeping.

The ceiling to the ELMINT building
began to slide apart, and Lucien jerked his gaze upwards. “Shit,”
he muttered. Whirling around, he dashed over to the C-4 and
snatched up the brick. Running back across the plank, he placed the
bomb against the crystal. He hit a button, and the case slid shut
as the machine’s satellite head began tilting backwards to aim at
the exposed sky.

Lucien went to punch a button on the
detonator, just to realize he hadn’t grabbed it. He whirled around
to see Amadeo standing, holding it in one hand, his gun pointed at
Lucien with the other.

“
You failed, Lucien,” Amadeo
sneered. “But considering it’s you, that’s no shocker.”

Lucien lifted his hands halfway in
gesture of surrender, but his gray eyes were mocking. “The nice
thing about C-4 is how it reacts to intense heat. I’m thinking,
when that thing charges up to fire, that crystal is going to get
pretty hot.”

Amadeo’s eyes widened and his gaze
jerked from Lucien to the device just behind him. “No.”

Taking advantage of Amadeo’s
distraction, Lucien charged him, getting a hand around the gun and
sending a shot harmlessly into the air. As the two men collided,
the ELMINT engaged its activation sequence, and the Atlantean
crystal began charging in preparation to fire.

Outside, a monstrous pillar of fire and
smoked stained the sky when the ELMINT exploded.

Chapter 21

“
Find out just what people
will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of
injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will
continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or
both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of
those whom they oppress.”

- Frederick Douglass

December 20, 2012 - 11:00 PM

New Orleans, LA

Gallier Hall

Vasco arrived in New Orleans at a
moment of sudden panic. Just a minute before, power lines had
suddenly erupted in showers of dangerous sparks, then shut down,
thrusting the city into darkness. High above, where the human eye
couldn’t see, the Global Satellite Communications system was a
sitting duck to the awesome power of the sun, and one by one, each
satellite had been fried by the peaking solar storms.

Vasco stood behind a tree in Lafayette
Park, directly across from Gallier Hall, watching. The thermoptic
device attached to his belt kept him hidden. Gallier Hall was a
beautiful example of Greek revival architecture. The building had
once housed New Orleans’ City Hall, currently it was rented out for
high profile parties, events, or the Brotherhood, whenever they
needed it. The Roshaniya and select members of their followers were
inside the building, but the blackout had rudely interrupted their
party, and now they were as confused and concerned as everyone
else.

St. Charles Avenue had been blocked off
from Podryas Street to Girod. Local police, and scattered military
watched the perimeters. More prevalent were the personal security
of the Brotherhood, serious-faced, plain-suited men that resembled
the Secret Service. After the power went out, they stood in small
groups, conversing with each other. Because radios no longer
worked, they couldn’t get a hold of anyone with authority, and they
weren’t sure what to do.

Vasco’s mouth subtly curved. The mere
fact that the city was suddenly on a power and communications
blackout meant Lucien had accomplished his mission, though Vasco
had never doubted it. He took a moment to savor his brother’s
victory. When that moment pass-ed, it was time for his. He touched
his Sirian headset.

“
Compound, come in. This is
SVT. I’m going in.”

“
Roger that,
SVT.”

Vasco removed the device, folded it
shut, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his fatigues. He
pulled the night vision goggles from the top of his head down over
his eyes and removed his 9mm. It had been fitted with a silencer
and laser scope. Deftly avoiding brushing against any security
guards, Vasco walked up the stone steps and into the
building.

Tony’s intel stated that the Roshaniya
would be on the third floor. Inside, the building it was pitch
black, except for the sway of security guards’ flashlights over the
well-dressed elite. A noisy, tense hum filled the air, and over the
guests’ voices he could hear the stern, but shaky, voices of their
security guards, asking them to remain calm and in their
perspective reception halls. Easing past them all, Vasco went to
the staircase. He was halfway up it when he paused. Caesar stood at
the top, waving his flashlight over the crowd below, his gaze
searching—and knowing. Vasco’s hand flexed around the handle of his
gun, but he resisted the urge to shoot Caesar right then and there.
He pacified his ego with patience and walked right past his
nemesis.

At the top of the stairs, Vasco made a
right. The ballroom, where the six members of the Roshaniya and one
hundred of their devoted followers were, was at the end of the
hallway. There were three doors to get into it. Vasco walked over
to the one in the middle and cracked it open. He could hear their
raised voices from within.

“
Where are the
gods?”

“
I thought we had a device
that would prevent this?”

“
How we will get in touch
with them?”

“
Keep quiet, all of you. The
cars will be brought around soon, and we’ll retreat to the
underground bases.”

Vasco slipped in through the door, in
front of a small group of men, and silently closed it behind him. A
security guard flashed a light in his direction, but of course, saw
nothing. Vasco eased to the right of the doorway and watched the
guard walk over to the door, open it back up, peek out into the
hallway, and then shrug and close it again. Vasco stepped up onto
an empty chair to give him a better vantage point and line of
sight. Most of the men in the room wore their traditional
ceremonial robes. The power outage had interrupted them at the
beginning of Cremation of Care ritual, and aside from the
illuminating beam of the flashlights, the eerie glow of candles
provided some light for the room. Vasco adjusted the zoom feature
on his goggles and began searching the crowd. Having memorized the
faces of the men he was to kill, they were not hard to locate. They
were where he thought they would be, standing around the giant owl
statue that had been positioned in the corner of the
room.

Vasco lifted the weapon, watching the
small red dot make a perfect mark against his target’s chest. He
pulled the trigger without hesitation, slid the weapon a few inches
to the right, and did it again. When the third Roshaniya dropped,
clutching his chest, the rest of their brothers realized that
something was horribly wrong.

“
Someone’s shooting at
us!”

“
Let no one leave, find the
shooter, goddammit!”

Operating on a pure hunch, Caesar had
come upstairs to check on the Roshaniya when he heard the chaos
echoing out from the ballroom. He threw open the door closest to
the stairs just as the fifth Roshaniya dropped to the
ground.

“
My brothers are dead! Help
us!”

As Saintclair shouted, Caesar snapped
his gaze over to the Roshaniya and saw the red dot marking his
forehead. His urge to kill Vasco outweighing his duty, Caesar
didn’t warn the elder, but followed the faint laser line across the
room. He lost it right by the second door and narrowed his eyes.
Shoving some panicked member of the Brotherhood out of his way,
Caesar pulled the Taser gun from underneath his suit jacket,
stepped back out into the hallway, and inched closer to the door he
suspected Vasco would exit from.

Vasco didn’t bother to watch the last
man fall after he pulled the trigger. Keeping the gun in his hand,
he stepped down, pulled the door back open, stepped out into the
hallway—and pain exploded through his system.

When Caesar saw the door open he
counted two seconds, took a gamble and squeezed the trigger. He was
rewarded with Vasco’s surprised shout, and the sound of a body
hitting the floor, just as the Brotherhood began pouring out of the
doorway behind him, shouting and screaming about an enemy
within.

Walking over to where the taser was
stuck into a form he couldn’t yet see, Caesar reached down, patting
Vasco by the waist, and found the thermoptic device. “Did DeMarco
give you these?” Caesar switched it off, and Vasco immediately
appeared, twitching violently. Caesar smirked coldly. “I bet you’re
pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?” He knelt down and patted
Vasco’s cheek. “So am I.”

The last thing Vasco saw before
consciousness was ripped from him was Caesar’s dark
smile.