The Legend of Things Past (Beyond Pluto SciFi Futuristic Aventures Book 1) (18 page)

“Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to
preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window
to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?”

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

May 20, 2176

Lohiri

Donovan Knight

Donovan scrambled along the walls, using them for support.
His whole body burned with fatigue. He fell a couple of times but forced
himself to get back up and keep going. He wondered why he wasn’t dead yet.

“It’s pointless,” McGregor said from a few yards behind him.
“You’ll never get away from me. You’re too weak.”

Donovan kept going. He thought he might pass out. He had to
get out of there. Alive. He only knew one way to exit the building and that was
through the front doors. He retraced his and Tobias’s steps.

He saw the door to the clone room up ahead. He summoned a
burst of energy he didn’t know he had. Donovan ran at full speed. He heard a
loud sigh behind him.

Donovan dodged the cloning stations, heading for the other
door at the opposite end of the room.

“You can’t escape,” McGregor called. His voice echoed in the
emptiness. “The place is swarming with clones waiting for the signal to attack.
I could call them at this very moment, you know. But I quite enjoy seeing you
suffer.”

At the mention of clones, Donovan realized that his answer
was right in front of him. He dove to the nearest cloning station and sank to
the ground.

“That won’t protect you,” McGregor said.

Donovan opened the cabinet underneath the table. He tried to
move carefully so as not to alert McGregor to what he was doing, but his hands
shook with the weakness and he knocked over several test tubes stored inside.

“What are you doing, Knight?” McGregor’s voice lost its
arrogance. “You shouldn’t play with the grownups’ toys.”

Donovan heard the urgency in McGregor’s footsteps. He
scrambled for the right vial. They all seemed to say “primer.” That wasn’t what
he wanted. He already had the virus.

Finally, his hand seized a vial labeled E-X45. He grabbed a
syringe and jammed it into the vial, pulling the plunger to suck up the liquid
that he hoped would save his life. His vision blurred. His head was spinning.
He held his eyes wide open until his leg came into focus.

His body hurt so much already that he didn’t fear the small
bite of pain that came next. He pushed the plunger back down and felt the E-X45
enter his bloodstream. For a moment, he lost consciousness. His mind was fading
in and out, from blackness to blurry vision, back and forth until he felt
dizzy.

Finally, the images around him began to clear. He could see
again. His heartbeat slowed down. It was easier to breath. He took the air into
his lungs in gulps, like a man who had just been rescued from drowning.

It was a high unlike anything Donovan had ever felt, coming
back from the brink of death. McGregor’s footsteps were almost upon him.

Vigor flowed through Donovan’s veins. The tiredness
vanished. It was like he had never been tired in his life—he couldn’t quite
remember what it felt like, only that it hurt.

McGregor’s footsteps halted just behind the cloning station
Donovan leaned his back against. He sat there, waiting, basking in the euphoria
of energy and life.

McGregor popped around the corner of the cloning station,
thinking that he was surprising Donovan. Donovan grasped McGregor’s arm just
before his hand closed around his neck. He looked at McGregor and smiled.

McGregor was angry. “So, you’ve taken the real formula. It
doesn’t matter. I will still kill you.”

Donovan laughed. He pulled McGregor’s arm, wrenching his
whole body forward then used his other hand to punch him in the face. Donovan
let go of his arm, letting him fall from the force of the strike.

He was on his feet. He was ready to fight.

McGregor was only momentarily stunned. He was facing
Donovan, perfectly fine, a second later.

This time, Donovan didn’t become weaker as he shielded
himself from McGregor’s blows. He felt stronger with every passing minute. The
formula worked on his insides like a super-drug.

He wasn’t a Brigadier General and Army Specialist for
nothing. When their strength matched, it was almost too easy for Donovan to
win. His kicks and punches came faster and faster, overwhelming McGregor’s
defense with a flurry of limbs. Donovan landed a kick to side of McGregor’s
left leg, right where the patella—or knee bone—connected the femur and tibia.
The joint snapped under the pressure, sending a rebounding
crack
through
the room, leaving the leg bent awkwardly inward.

McGregor stumbled, groaning in pain. He snapped the bones
back into place, screaming through his teeth.

Donovan landed another hit to McGregor’s left shoulder. The
arm sagged at his side as it dislocated from the socket. Donovan didn’t give
him a chance to pop it back into place. He swung again, aiming for McGregor’s
weak side.

McGregor spun with a flourish, raising his right arm to
block Donovan. The pain from his arm slowed him, though, and he didn’t keep his
arm moving through the blocking motion, which would have lessened the impact.
McGregor only raised his arm to cover his face in a desperate move of defense. Donovan’s
punch landed directly on McGregor’s arm, adding another snapped bone to the
collection.

McGregor was unable to defend himself when Donovan kicked
him under the chin, sending him flying. Donovan wasn’t even out of breath. He
walked calmly to McGregor’s prone form and bent down next to him.

McGregor was still aware—the kick hadn’t knocked him out. He
looked up at Donovan with an amused smile.

Donovan pulled an e-gun from his holster and jammed it into
McGregor’s cheek.

“I should kill you now.”

McGregor’s expression didn’t change. “Go ahead.” He
shrugged. “It wouldn’t make a difference to the movement now.”

“I suppose not,” Donovan said. “What I’m trying to figure
out is how scum like you became the leader of the Army and Space Force. You’re
the General in my time.”

“Is that so?” McGregor said. “Then Tobias and I accomplish
far more than we ever thought.”

“You’ll regret your partnership soon enough,” Donovan said,
watching McGregor’s smirking face. “You’re the one who sent me back here in the
first place. Why would you do that, huh? Certainly not to give Tobias a hand.
There was absolutely no advantage for Tobias in having me sent back.”

For the first time McGregor looked unsettled, but he quickly
regained his composure. “Maybe I knew you’d be trouble and got rid of you
before you could interrupt our plans.”

“You would have just had me killed on a mission,” Donovan
said. “Far easier, don’t you think? Sending me back could never guarantee that
I’d die.”

McGregor’s face twitched as he tried to cover his confusion
with bravado. “It doesn’t matter what you say. You’re probably lying. We’ve
already won and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Donovan chuckled then found himself laughing uncontrollably.
After a few minutes he sobered. “He’s going to betray you. I don’t know when,
but he will. That’s why you switched back to our side. Except, in the original
time line… no one knew about your betrayal. Now that you’ve sent me back, who
knows what will become of you?”

McGregor snarled. “You don’t know what you’re talking
about!”

Donovan stood up and walked away. McGregor’s voice chased
him out of the room. “You’re going to die, Knight! You’re going to die along
with the rest of them!”

Donovan headed back to the library. Now that he had the
strength, he was going to kill Tobias and end this. He ran into a few clones on
the way but they were nothing he couldn’t handle. Tobias didn’t have much
fighting skill—the strength and extra senses didn’t help his clones against
Donovan’s superior combat experience.

Soon they were flooding the halls. Experience mattered, but
so did numbers. Donovan was just lucky the halls forced them to attack him only
four at a time. Donovan fought them off one by one. Their bodies began to pile
up creating a barrier of protection. Blood streamed across the floor. Still
they came.

Donovan became frustrated. He would never find the real
Tobias like this.

From nowhere, a figure flickered into his vision out of the
corner of his eye. Donovan had spun around, leg already flying through the air,
when he realized that it was Tracee. He stopped himself mid-kick, almost losing
his balance.

Tracee winked and jumped into the fray, killing clones left
and right with the speed of a viper. Donovan was amazed—she didn’t even have
the E-X45.

“We have to get out of here,” Tracee said, shooting a clone
through the head with a gun. “There are too many of them.”

“I have to find Tobias. I have to put an end to this.”

“You’ll never find him amongst all these. He could be
anywhere. You can’t do it without the brain wave tracker.”

Donovan knew she was right but didn’t want to admit it. He
put all of his anger into a kick that sent a clone flying over the barrier of
bodies and careening into its comrades. They all fell over like pins at a bowling
alley.

“Let’s go!” he said.

They ran, climbing up the hill of bodies where the flood of
clones seemed thinnest. They hacked and fired their way through until most of
the clones were behind them and only a few came at them from the front, late to
the battle. They ran past them without engaging.

Donovan heard the stampede of footsteps behind them but
didn’t look back. Tracee kept pace beside him. She had to have been far better
trained than Donovan had imagined, to be able to keep up with him now. She
didn’t even seem that tired. Donovan was about to turn a corner to go back to
the clone room, but Tracee pulled him in the opposite direction.

“This way! It’s faster.”

Donovan followed her down hall after hall, wondering how she
knew where she was going. Eventually the clones fell behind, their footsteps
mere echoes in the halls.

Donovan collided hard with a moving body. They both fell to
the ground. Donovan jumped back up ready to fight but was surprised at who had
shown up.

Captain Brian Umar lay crumpled on the ground, moaning and
holding his side. Donovan helped him struggle to his feet.

“Good God that hurt.” Captain Umar clasped his hands on
either side of his head and stared straight ahead. Donovan recognized the gesture.
To Captain Umar’s eyes, the world was spinning.

“What are you doing here, Umar?” Donovan asked. “You’re not
a fighter.”

“You’re right,” Brian said. “But I couldn’t just sit around
and do nothing. Jonathan helped create a path for me to get in here. I’ve been
wandering around looking for you. Luckily, I only met a few clones.” He held up
his gun. “Easy.”

“Is Jonathan okay?” Donovan asked.

“Alive without injury last time I saw him. But that could
change at any moment. They’re strong, and there are too many of them. There
aren’t enough skilled soldiers to fight them off.”

“Then we’d better get going,.” Donovan said.

“Wait,” Brian said. “I found the cure. It was in the
basement of the fort—in plain sight, just like you said. You were right. They’re
recreating it now. They’ll make enough to cure everyone.”

“Perfect!” Tracee said. “Then that means…”

“All we need to do is kill Tobias and destroy this place,” Brian
said. “I’ve brought something to help us out.” He pulled a small, round object
out of his jacket. It was made of silver metal. A blue light pulsed through its
many cracks.

Donovan and Tracee back away quickly.

“How the hell did you get that thing?” Tracee asked.

“The General gave it to me,” Brian answered. “Don’t worry, I
know how to work it.”

He reached to push one of the buttons.

“Don’t!” Donovan said. He rushed forward and pulled back Brian’s
hand. “If you push that button, it’ll detonate!”

“Oh.” He looked stunned. “Oh… oh… Oh my God, I almost killed
us! I thought it was the twenty-minute timer.”

“How about you hand that over to me?” Tracee said, stepping forward
tentatively as she swallowed hard.

Brian placed it gingerly in her hand.

“There,” she said, pushing a button so the ball stopped
glowing. “Safe and sound. It’s in sleep mode for now.”

“Quick, Brian,” Donovan said, “give me an update. What’s
going on? How did you guys know I wasn’t a traitor?”

Brian recounted the events of the last few days. “Now all we
need to do is get all of the troops a safe distance from the building and blow
it up from the inside. We couldn’t fire any missiles—the lab is protected by an
electromagnetic field. The longest countdown on that detonator is twenty
minutes. Do you think that’s enough time?”

“It’ll have to be,” Donovan said. “Activate it, Tracee. Then
we’ll make a run for it. We’ll go straight to the troops and have them fall
back to the ships.”

Tracee turned the bomb back on. “Get ready.”

She looked around the hall. Spotting a rather large display
of miniature statues of scientists, she ran to it and placed the ball behind
one of the figures. She reached up and held her finger over the timer button.

“Get ready to run,” she said, then took a deep breath and
pushed it. The ball hummed quietly. Tracee ran passed them at top speed. They
followed behind her.

Suddenly, at regular intervals, black metal squares
descended from the ceilings. They flickered on and began projecting the same
image over and over on the walls. It was Tobias.

“What’s going on?” Tracee asked.

“I don’t know,” Donovan said. “Just keep running. Get us out
of here!”

Tobias’s voice sounded all around them.