REHO: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Hegemon Wars) (23 page)

Ends sensed the ticking of an internal clock. In no time, chaos would erupt in the facility, but they would shoot their way through it until they located Rainne:
SW.34
.

The halls remained clear as the panel lit green, and Slater popped open the door. Both guards had their weapons drawn but were cut down by Slater and Thursday before they could get off a shot.

Ends approached the life form that he had seen through the window. He could hear Thursday’s rapid breathing beside him.

It was Slater who spoke first. “Take care of that thing on the wall. Give me ninety seconds to override the system.”

Ends sensed her purpose before she even spoke. Her brilliant green eyes were trapped inside a face that was integrated into a machine built into the wall. Most of her body was gone. He could see compartments and silver cylinders where her heart and lungs should be. They’d left her in the alley that night, left her behind with her kingdom, to watch the destruction of everything her father and grandfather had built. But she hadn’t disappeared; she hadn’t burned with her city.

“What did they do?” Thursday muttered.

“It’s Mar,” Ends said.

“I know that. I mean why?”

Her eyes, which had been still, darted left and locked on Thursday. He jerked back and lifted his weapon.

“Put it down!” Ends said.

“What did they do to you?” Ends asked, stepping closer to what consisted of Mar and some sort of computer system.

“I knew you were coming.” The machine tried to replicate Mar’s voice and intonation, but succeeded only in making her sound like some horrid experiment. And that’s what she was:
a horrid experiment.

“You knew?” Ends asked.

“I am Communications,” she stated, her words overlapping and fading into a high, electronic squeal.

“I got it!” Slater shouted. “Sixty seconds.”

“You need to divert control of the system to me,” Mar said.

“No,” Slater said as he gestured toward a row of monitors running across the computer panel. “Why should we trust you?”

“You’ll never get my sister out unless you let me take control of the system,” Mar replied. “The rain has kept most of the Hegemon from returning to the facility. They are repairing their ship and have left only a few dozen to maintain the facility.

Repairing the ship?
There was no time to ask now.

“What’s in there?” Ends asked, pressing a finger against a monitor labeled SW. The screen was filled with cages
. Surely she would help.

“Secret Weapons Division Experimentation,” she said.

“We can’t trust her. She’s wired to the whole facility. She’ll trap us in here,” Slater said. “Twenty seconds and she is locked out. We stick to the plan!”

“Open it. She’s helped us this far, and you know it. Everything has gone too smoothly. Even now. She knew our plans and has helped. You can feel it!” Ends said.

Five seconds.

“This is a bad idea!”
Slater hit a series of buttons on the panel.

Then the lights shut off.

***

“The storm is pulling us to shore!” Gibson said as he flipped through the outside cameras. The weather monitor displayed the winds at ninety-seven mph. “I don’t know if we can keep from grounding without starting the engines and heading farther out. We’re already six hundred yards closer to the coast.”

Sola looked at the equipment and felt the need to gain control. It was in these moments that she believed it was all going to end. She didn’t feel powerful here,
not like she did when Cold-Blu flowed through her. It gave her confidence, overpowering her sense of frailty.

“Drive us back out,” she said. She knew it was a gamble. Issues with the anchors, damage from the storm, or going too far out could jeopardize everything.

“There’s at least a fifteen second delay in the GPS,” Gibson said. “If I go too far . . .”

“You can do this,” Sola said. The ship rolled, tossing everything about the room. Sola reached out and steadied Reho in the Cockpit and stopped the health monitor from toppling over. “Ouch!”

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” she replied. “I just cut my arm on this stuff.”

“Deal with it later. I need you to watch the monitor while I turn us.”

Sola stared at the monitor, her eyes on the storm, her mind was fixed on the pills that called to her from the medic bag across the room.

“What am I looking for?” Sola asked.

“This,” Gibson replied, smudging a finger against the night sky on the monitor. “Wait until another wave hits then when you see the sky like this tell me and I’ll turn this baby around faster than Thursday can blow off two fingers!”

Gibson flipped a switch to raise the anchors and steered the yacht away from the coast and back toward the sea as a brief break in the waves opened up for them.

“All right!” he shouted. “We’re turned.”

“We have to anchor!” Sola shouted.

It took several minutes for the anchors to drop and grip the ocean floor.

“Oh wow, you’re really bleeding,” Gibson said.

“Yeah,” Sola replied. “I’ll get something for it.”

The train screeched
to a halt three miles from the station. The door to the navigation room hissed as it opened. Reho walked back into the passenger car he had come through and exited from the same door he had entered.

This station’s platform was different from the other. It was made of what looked to be concrete with endless rows of colossal, round columns running in twos along the walkway. He saw a door on the far end and nothing else. Reho raised his assault rifle and worked his way down the station’s walkway.

The door was metal. There was no doorknob or panel. He pushed on it, but it didn’t budge. As Reho lifted a grenade off his vest, the door opened halfway. Reho pocketed the grenade and equipped his rifle.

A series of steps lay behind the door. Reho ascended the stairs with his assault rifle raised. His eyes darted behind him after every few steps. At the top, a second heavy metal door swung open as he approached.

Behind the door was a coliseum-sized room of OldWorld design and construction. A steel control tower hovered over the room, which was crisscrossed with pipes; below it, an enormous opening emitted blue light from the nuclear reactor. Ladders and catwalks stretched in every direction, as far as the eye could see.

His AIM displayed the room and the surrounding power plant. He could make out the smokestacks and water coolers. This is where it would all end. Slater had sent him here to do one thing: cause a nuclear meltdown. Whatever happened here would also happen at Omega.

Reho’s thoughts went to Rainne as he made his way to the metal catwalk extending over the nuclear reactor. He trusted Ends to get her out.
Otherwise, none of this matters.

Something rattled and banged inside the sheet-metal air ducts running around the top of the reactor’s room. A sudden screech sent Reho to his knees as he dropped his weapon and cupped his hands around his ears. Warping and popping noises replaced the unbearable sound. Reho lifted his weapon in the direction of the noise. Dints and holes remained where the creature had been.

It continued to move, heading for the end of the air duct nearest the platform. He sent a burst of fire into the air duct.

The creature barged through the vent cover and landed behind rows of pipe that ran to the cooling chamber. Reho paused. Whatever it was, it would be the Mainframe’s final attempt to stop him. Reho lifted himself onto the bottom rung of the ladder and rushed to the top platform. He couldn't see behind the pipes, but he could hear something thrashing against the ground.
It’s wounded!

Reho crouched and rounded the pipe where he’d heard it.

It was gone.

“Uranium is what killed your kind!”
A croaky, familiar voice echoed through the room.

Reho twisted around but couldn’t find its source. “Jimmy!”

“Long before the Hegemon arrived, your people were on the verge of extinction. We offered you a chance to live and not want. And you chose to live in the Blastlands and that obnoxious political cesspool of Darksteam. You chose hardships. That is why we’re superior. That is why we’re Hegemon. That is why I am now one of them—why you could be one of them too.”

Jimmy stood on the catwalk suspended above the nuclear reactor. “Now you see me?”

Reho moved to the edge of the high platform and set his rifle’s sight on Jimmy. He wore the same doctor’s coat Reho had seen in his dream about James Sorensen. He was Jimmy. He was Hegemon.

“What is the purpose of all this, Jimmy? The more I think about it all, the more confusing it becomes. What are we doing here?” Reho’s instincts told him to shoot, let Jimmy’s body fall into the reactor and shut down the coolant pipes. Then it would all be over.

“The purpose?” Jimmy said as he paced along the catwalk. “The purpose is simple: at first we wanted to annihilate your entire species. Let you huddled together in your deathtrap utopia.” Jimmy scoffed. “Neopan is the biggest lie ever sold to your kind. But your kind didn’t listen. Instead, you spread out across the planet. So, we found another use for you. After our starship left, a garrison remained behind to assist several researchers. Once we understood your physiology and perfected our experimentations with altering your genetic makeup, we wanted to keep at least some of you around. We wanted a perfect race of soldiers that we could control. We wanted a race of freaks like you!”

Sweat ran down Reho’s back as the temperature increased in the room. The reactor was producing enough heat for his AIM to flash a warning signal. The room had reached one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit.

“You really ought to come down so we don’t have to yell across the room,” Jimmy said.

Reho needed to reach the reactor’s control panel. He focused his gun on Jimmy as he descended the ladder. He skirted the side of the room, taking the long way to the control panel.

“How is it that you’re a Hegemon now?” Reho asked, wiping his brow.

“Ah, yes . . . yes!” Jimmy said, his voice tainted with childlike excitement. “I thought you would never ask. But you already know the answer. At least part of it.”

“You were alive during the alien invasion. A neurologist, I suppose?”

“Very good, what else?”

“You were taken by them. Then what? You offered your services to them?”

“This is where it gets a bit tricky,” Jimmy said. “They took me for experimentation. When they immersed into my mind, they found that I could explain more about the human psyche than they would be able to learn in a decade on their own. So, they spared my inevitable mutation or death and gave me a single task.” Jimmy moved away from the catwalk and sat on the bottom step of the stairs leading to the control panel.

Reho stopped twenty feet from the stairs and kept his assault rifle on Jimmy.

“So what was your part?”

“I would enter into the minds of those they abducted,” Jimmy replied, “and discover what they could best be used for. Maybe an example will help you see the full magnitude of what I’ve done for them all these years. There was a young woman brought in a long time ago. She feared the ocean. It wasn’t the sharks or drowning she feared, but its vastness. She knew that if her kingdom was ever taken away, she’d have to live out there, surrounded by endless water, somewhere beneath its depths or above its surface. It didn’t matter which; the very thought drove her crazy. Then we brought her here, pregnant. We removed that fear from her genetics. Instead, we gave her a love for the ocean. That love would prove to be a strength for her child. We never saw it though, not until a few weeks ago. You see—” Jimmy stood and walked to the top of the stairs. He looked down into the reactor.

“You’re talking about Mar.” Reho knew he didn’t have much time, but needed to hear this. Jimmy had the answers to questions that had haunted him all his life.

“She isn’t afraid of the ocean,” Jimmy said. “Your friends out there on the ship, they’re safe for now. But when the storm stops and the rains are gone, we’ll hunt them. And Mar will help us find them.”

Suddenly, Jimmy’s body cracked and ripped as it folded in half. A bone-chilling snap, followed by the sounds of tearing flesh, sent Reho stumbling away from the stairs. A voice screamed through the agony of Jimmy’s transformation into something Reho could only describe as nightmarish. It wasn’t Hegemon, but something else.

“You wanted to see the face of your mother’s screams! You wanted to see what your kind once called evil!” A sick, throaty voice screamed out as its body enlarged and limbs ripped out of its flesh. Its head sunk into its massive torso as bone spikes ripped along its back and surrounded its face. There were eight spider-like legs protruding from its body. But in its center was Jimmy’s lizard-like flesh, and eyes that had been black were now glowing like headlights on an OldWorld gasoline.

Reho fired into the creature as it moved down the stairwell toward him. The bullets caused it to flinch, but it continued. Reho dropped the assault rifle and pushed himself away from the stairs as he emptied the shotgun into the creature. Two spikes were blasted off its body, but it didn’t show any signs of slowing down. Reho ran and leapt, his hands latching onto a catwalk running high in the air. He’d never seen what he could really do in the Mainframe. He thought back to the androids and how he had taken them out with ease.

Reho swung himself onto the catwalk. As the creature moved below him, Reho considered tossing a grenade in its direction, then stopped. The explosion could cause an early nuclear meltdown. He needed to shut off the cooling pipes first. They needed the warning. Without it, the place would blow and Ends, Slater, and Thursday would fail.
And Rainne—

The creature launched into the air and grasped the catwalk with three of its spidery legs. It twisted its body and rocketed itself toward Reho.

Reho hadn’t expected the sudden attack. The creature’s body pushed against him as its legs stabbed the grated floor beneath him, pinning them together. Reho’s knife was now wedged between his back and the catwalk. He freed a hand and reached for one of the Eagles. He fired the clip into the creature, and it loosened its grip but didn’t flee.

Jimmy’s head rolled down, face-to-face with Reho. The grotesque sight, heightened by the bloodied outline of his face inside the morphed body, reminded Reho of his nightmares as a child: the spider that had once crawled into his bed, its long, thick, hairy legs buried beneath the covers with him. How it crawled onto his neck. He remembered waking up, horrified at the creature. The nightmares had lasted for weeks. He had never truly been afraid of anything as a child except for that.
And Jimmy knew.

“I can see it in your eyes, little boy,” the creature said.

He knew my fear.

Reho lifted his hips and reached for his knife. He planted the blade through the side of Jimmy’s head. The creature’s reaction was swift. Reho went with it over the edge of the catwalk and onto the facility’s floor, refusing to let go of the blade’s handle. The creature scampered away and hid behind another row of pipes across the room.
Now!

Reho didn’t pursue the creature. Instead, he rushed to the control room and found the shut off valves for the cooling pipes.

Warning! Warning! Coolant system closed. Please reengage cooling with reactor. Nuclear meltdown in 28 minutes and 34 seconds
.
Warning! Warning! Coolant
. . .

Red lights flashed, reminding Reho of the morning he’d woken in Traveler’s Rest Stop. He’d dreamed of this night there: the beach, a wine bottle, the ship off the coast sailing away from him in the storm.

The creature moved from its hiding place and leapt onto the catwalk over the reactor.

“The end of the world is here, Reho! You know this reactor won’t blow. You know she dies. Like your mother, Rainne dies!” Jimmy said over the blaring warning system.

“Not tonight,” Reho said as he threw himself off the control tower and onto the catwalk. He rushed Jimmy and both went flying off the catwalk onto the facility’s floor. Reho dodged one of the lethal legs and grabbed another, snapping it off. The creature’s screams were bloodcurdling. As it attempted to pull away, Reho emptied his last pistol into the creature, blasting its torso in hopes of hitting a vital organ.

“You can’t kill what’s eternal!”

Reho tossed the gun; he was unarmed except for the three grenades left on his vest. He had to make sure it was dead without jeopardizing an early explosion.

Reho dodged an attack from one of the spidery legs and dove underneath the creature. He grasped two of its legs and ripped them from the beast. The creature wobbled, green fluid gushing from the gaping wounds. With its remaining three legs, it launched an attack. Reho pulled a leg. It snapped, but jerked with a strength he hadn’t seen before. The Jimmy-creature pulled back as one of its other legs sliced through Reho’s arm, severing it at the shoulder.

The strike had been an impressive, lightning-quick move. The torrent of blood glistened as it spilled from Reho’s shoulder. He fought to catch his breath. The blood pooled around him as the spider morphed back into Jimmy.

“Your kind thinks it can win the war. Now let’s show them they never will,” Jimmy said as he walked away from Reho and ascended the control tower. He opened the coolant system and the alarm ceased.

Reactor overheated. Cooling commenced. Return to normal temperatures in 47 minutes and 18 seconds.

Reho could do nothing. He had never felt death before, never even come close to being seriously wounded. He’d felt pain before, but it wasn’t like this. His mind raced as he pushed away memories of his childhood, thoughts of Rainne as they slept with their bodies tangled as one, the thought of his crew realizing that the nuclear meltdown was not coming.

His mind turned to survival. If he died, the mission would fail. And everything they had sacrificed would be for nothing.

***

SW. 34 was located in the experimental sector of the building. They had relinquished full control of the facility to Mar. Every door was open in this sector, and whatever was locked away here, it would be able to move freely. Anything human or animal would likely require oxygen, and Ends imagined that whatever got loose would put up a hell of a fight before it suffocated. At least the emergency lights were on.

Slater led them through the dark, following illuminated floor tiles that Mar had activated to lead them first to Rainne, then to the airlock.