Savior Part 2: Son of Eden (The Savior Series) (17 page)

“Yeah, and they make Hondas in Ohio but that doesn’t make them American cars now, does it? You people make me sick. You’re all the reason we got involved with this alien crap in the first place. Freaking idiot liberals traded the soul of this country for nothing more than a few shiny trinkets,” General Thompson scoffed.

“That’s enough, General,” Wells warned as he noticed my hands starting to tremble with rage as the General’s bigoted tirade continued.

“The hell it is. I’ll be damned if I stand by and watch his kind take over this country. Filthy alien mongrels—”

And just like that, I had had enough. I had tried taking deep breaths, counting to ten, and even thinking about Monica—but despite my best efforts to control it, the rage inside of me finally boiled over as the General continued to spew his hate speech. I crossed the room in an instant and gripped both hands around his fleshy neck before the members of his nearby security detail could even draw their guns. I heard them shouting at me as I tightened my hands around the General’s neck and he scratched and clawed at my hands with all his might. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I contemplated how easily I could end him as I felt the vertebrate in his neck shift beneath my powerful fingers.

“That’s right, you pathetic bastard! I’ll give you a reason to fear me!” I bellowed as the General’s eyes widened with terror as he realized that no one could save him from me. The twenty Secret Service agents that surrounded me with their guns drawn didn’t even register as a threat to me. All that mattered in that moment was teaching that prick a lesson—and everything else was just background noise.

“Release him, Reaper!” Wells ordered as blood tricked from the General’s nose and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“I’m gonna gas him!” one the Secret Service agents shouted as he withdrew a gas grenade from his hip.

“You stand down, son!” Wells barked before the agent could arm the grenade. “Ace, get in there before he kills him!” Wells continued.

Ace immediately leapt into action, sliding across the table and darting toward me with astonishing quickness. I tried to swat him away with my left hand but he easily slipped under my arm and quickly delivered several pressure point attacks to my neck and abdomen before I could react. My right arm and leg were instantly paralyzed and I toppled to the floor while Ace stood guard over me as the crowd of Secret Service agents closed in around us.

“Get your hands off of him!” Ace yelled as one of the agents attempted to restrain me.

“I want that filthy alien in chains right now!” General Thompson growled as the Secret Service agents helped him to his feet.

“That’s not going to happen, Frank,” Wells said calmly as the feeling in my right leg and arm finally started to return.

“Dammit, if you won’t take care of him I will!” General Thompson grumbled as he withdrew a pistol from a nearby agent’s hip and aimed it at me.

“Frank, what in the hell are you doing?!” Secretary Montgomery shouted.

“What’s it look like I’m doing? You saw what he did to me!” General Thompson barked.

“Frank, if you pull that trigger the only thing you’ll do is piss him off more than you already have,” Wells warned. “Now put that thing away and get the hell out of my sight before you piss me off too—and if you think Reaper was rough on you, you haven’t seen a damn thing yet,” Wells warned.

A few uneasy moments of silence passed before the General finally handed the pistol to a nearby agent and silently scoffed in my direction as he headed towards the exit.

“The President’s going to hear about this,” General Thompson said as he begrudgingly trudged past Wells.

“I’ll let you know if I lose any sleep,” Wells quipped, while across the room Ace reached down and helped me to my feet.

My heart was still racing and my legs were tingling as the effects of Ace’s nerve attack wore off but I managed to hobble back to my seat at the end of the table without falling to the floor again.

“If anyone else wants to antagonize The Reaper you can get the heck out of here as well. That damn kid is the only hope this planet has and I’ll be damned if I stand by and listen to any of this
alien
nonsense. He’s an American, dammit. End of story!” Wells said firmly as he took his place at the opposite end of the table. There was slight clamoring as the rest of the group took their seats back at the table but no one objected to Wells’ statement—at least not where we could hear it. “Now, where were we?” Wells continued.

“With all due respect, Director, I’d like to know how we’re supposed to know that this plan of yours will work considering the fact that your main asset is
… unstable,
to say the least. No offense, of course,” Secretary Montgomery said as he glanced in my direction.

“Reaper’s fine and besides, he won’t be by himself. We’re assembling a team to—”

“I told you I’m not fighting The Greater with a team,” I said firmly. Wells clenched his jaw out of frustration as he cut his eyes over to me.

“It sounds like there may be a monkey wrench in your plan, Wells,” Secretary Montgomery remarked as they all stared at me.

“We’re all confident in Reaper’s abilities, however we were entertaining the idea of adding some additional support when he challenges The Greater given that the Anokian laws allow it,” Wells said, obviously hoping that I would keep quiet.

“I don’t need an entire freaking team to fight
one
guy,” I repeated. “I’ll consider fighting with Ace but that’s it.”

“Reaper, we’re gonna need help,” Ace declared, to my surprise.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked.

“I’m afraid not, bud,” Ace admitted. “He’s a hell of a lot stronger than I thought he would be.”

“So you don’t think we can take him?” I asked.

“Just trust me, Reap. You haven’t seen what he can do yet, bro,” Ace said. “He’s even stronger than you are and he had this… energy that came out of his hands when he attacked. It was hotter than fire and when he hit Tango with a single wave of it, it nearly killed him.”

“Wait a second, you mean Tango the
Stranger
? What in the hell does he have to do with this?” I asked.

“Tango and Charlie have agreed to fight for us in exchange for getting their sentences commuted,” Wells said. “I understand your reservations given their ties to your brother’s organization, however their talents have proven quite useful thus far and frankly we’re at a point where we can use all the help we can get.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” I grumbled. “And I supposed Tango and Charlie are the other two members of this
team
you keep talking about, huh?”

“That’s correct,” Wells admitted. I thought about objecting but I simply clenched my jaw and shook my head out of frustration. I wasn’t sold on the idea of needing an entire team just to take on one man but I certainly wasn’t willing to waste any more of my time debating about it with someone as stubborn as Director Wells.

“What sort of contingency plan do we have in case your team can’t neutralize The Righteous before the Anokian fleet arrives?” Secretary Montgomery asked Wells.

“I hope it doesn’t come to this, but we’re prepared to move all essential personnel as well as their immediate family members to our base on the dark side of the moon if worst comes to worst.”

“You’re talking about abandoning Earth?” Howie asked.

“No, I’m talking about surviving,” Wells said firmly. “My hope is to have neutralized The Righteous before the Knights of Eden arrive, but if we fail to do so we won’t stand a chance at fighting back. Hiding out in the moon base will be our only option at that point.”

“What about our families? Are we supposed to just abandon them?” Howie asked.

“All essential personnel will be allowed to designate four family members that will also be given safe passage to the moon base once I give the order to evacuate. I’ll have my assistant, Cynthia contact you all with the details.”

“So, let’s say we can’t stop the aliens from invading and we all hide away on this secret moon base. What then? Are we supposed to just stay up there until they leave?” Secretary Montgomery asked sarcastically.

“Then we figure out what to do from there, Simon. I wish I had a better answer for you, but the reality is we don’t have a lot of options,” Wells replied.

“What about this girl? Are the Anokians really capable of using her to resurrect their Goddess on Earth?” Secretary Montgomery asked.

“They were able to summon the entity before so I wouldn’t doubt their ability to do it again,” Wells admitted.

“And if they bring Her back how do we stop it?”

“We can’t. If they bring Her back, we’re finished,” Wells said firmly.

“Just how powerful is this thing, Wells? You’re telling me there’s
nothing
we can do to stop it?”

“We’re talking about a being with the ability to defy the laws of physics, Simon. The only way to stop Her would be to separate Her true form from the physical vessel that She attaches Herself to—and we don’t have nearly enough firepower to even think about taking that thing on.”

“But hasn’t it been done before? The Equillian Federation was able to destroy the Goddess’ original vessel using the Guardians, if I’m not mistaken. At least that’s what it said in your files, Director,” Howie said.

“What in the hell is a Guardian, Wells?” Secretary Montgomery asked.

“The Guardians were an elite squadron of state-of-the-art android soldiers created by the Equillian Federation in order to turn the tide in the war against the Anokian Empire. The Federation seized a significant amount of Anokian-Steel from several of Eden’s moon colonies throughout the course of the war and once they had enough they used the nearly indestructible element to create what many believed to be the perfect soldiers—a squadron of thinking machines that were nearly impervious to damage and equipped with a hive mind AI that had predictive software so powerful that you literally couldn’t successfully attack them the same way twice. Those machines were so lethal that a single Guardian was capable of destroying a thousand men in an instant and even the Knights of Eden were no match for their might once the Equillians unleashed them.”

“And you’re saying they were powerful enough to destroy a God?” I asked skeptically.

“Absolutely,” Wells said firmly. “She took out quite a few of them as well, but in the end even the Goddess of Eden Herself could not withstand the power of Equillian ingenuity. During the battle one of the droids was able to convert its mass into anti-matter and when it collided with the Goddess’ vessel at nearly light speed the reaction was catastrophic—both the Guardian and the Goddess’ vessel were completely destroyed. The Guardian program had helped to tip the balance away from the Anokians but they also led to the deaths of billions of Anokian and Equillian citizens on that day. The sheer power of those machines made the rest of their Galactic Council nervous and eventually the program was completely decommissioned after a refugee hacker managed to upload a digital copy of his consciousness into one of the Guardians—which he used to nearly destroy an entire planet.”

“Well that’s just great,” Secretary Montgomery said sarcastically. “How in the hell is a decommissioned program supposed to help us?”

“The program was decommissioned after the Galactic Counsel passed legislation that outlawed the use of AI controlled troops in Andromeda Space. However, the laws made no mention of other galaxies. This all happened around the same time I found out about The Righteous and The Greater being transferred to the prison here on Earth so in order to beef up security I pulled some strings and got one of the Guardians that was slated to be destroyed transferred here instead.”

“Due to the fact that this thing may end up saving our lives, I’m going to ignore the fact that you basically just admitted that for nearly twenty years, you’ve secretly had a machine on this planet that was powerful enough to destroy us all.”

“The president knows about the Guardian, Simon, and that’s all that matters. But it’s all irrelevant at this point because the Guardian is no longer an option,” Wells said flatly.

“What do you mean it’s not an option?” Howie asked. “To me it sounds like our
only
option.”

“The Guardian was compromised by one of my former agents,” Wells answered as he glanced at me. After a few seconds I realized that he was referring to my birth mother. “She used a virus to corrupt the android’s AI and programmed it to free The Righteous and his followers. Thankfully we were able to trigger a remote shut down function before the Guardian could kill us all, but by the time we were able to execute the command The Righteous had already escaped.”

“Well where is the Guardian? Can’t we fix it?” Secretary Montgomery asked.

“It’s still at Area 51 right now. I’ve left it offline for all this time because we were never able to reverse the damage done by the virus. If we turn it back on who knows what could happen,” Wells replied.

“Why don’t you let me take a look at it?” Howie asked.

Wells stroked his chin as he pondered the idea. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he finally replied, to Howie and Secretary Montgomery’s dismay.

“What do you mean it’s not a good idea? You’re always telling me this kid is some kind of technical genius. If he can get this thing back online and give us a shot at killing this Goddess I think we should take the chance,” Secretary Montgomery protested.