Chương 199: Chapter 198: Ascending The Corporate Ladder (10/06/20216)

DATE: Tuesday, January 6, 2016 LOCATION: The Draven (LEO) | Downtown San Diego Arcology, CA LOCAL TIME: 10: 28 PM PST I had my answers. I knew exactly how it happened, and I knew exactly who held the knife. I looked down through the viewport at the swirling blue and white marble of the Earth. I didn't feel the grief anymore. Amy's final plea for forgiveness echoed in my mind, but the Operator took it, crushing the mercy and burying it deep in the vault alongside Lamech's ancient rage.

I manually engaged my vagal suppression, crushing the adrenaline spike.

"JAY," I said, my voice perfectly level.

"Pull the target deck from the Hollywood Hills archive. Isolate the biological hash for Eric Thorne."

"Target isolated," JAY chimed. A glowing red thread illuminated in the digital twin.

"Fast forward the execution log from the moment he left the inner sanctum to the present minute. Factor: ten thousand." The digital ether violently accelerated into a blinding strobe light. I watched his life play out in high-speed, silent surveillance. I watched Tlacaelel put on Amy's lab coat, seamlessly mimicking her handwriting at FSI. He isn't an ancient king, Lamech purred, his featureless face reflecting in the glass of Eric's office windows.

He is just a frightened, ambitious little man who traded a goddess for a corner office. The blur finally sharpened into the stark resolution of the present moment.

"Playback terminated. You have reached the live feed," JAY announced. It was 10: 15 PM on the West Coast. I was standing in the center of an immaculate luxury penthouse near the apex of the San Diego Arcology. Eric was sitting in a leather armchair. The holographic displays were flashing breaking alerts: U. S. AMBASSADOR CHAD TILLMAN KILLED IN BENGHAZI COMPOUND ATTACK. He didn't cry. He raised his glass of bourbon to the burning building on the screen and took a slow, victorious sip.

I stepped out of the digital twin.

"JAY," I said, unbuckling the safety harness of the command cradle.

"I have the target's live physical coordinates. San Diego Arcology. Sector 4. Executive Penthouse 88."

"The Arcology's airspace is restricted," JAY warned.

"A direct approach will trigger the perimeter defense net."

"We drop the ship into a free-fall ballistic trajectory. To the Arcology's radar, we'll just look like space debris burning up on re-entry. At two thousand feet, kill the inertia dampeners and open the drop bay. When I am one foot away from the balcony, untether me from Earth's gravity and retether me to the balcony."

"Understood. Good hunting, Chad." I stepped into the airlock, pulling the black tactical mask over my face. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The outer door slid open, revealing the screaming, rushing darkness of the Pacific night. I stepped out of the ship and fell into the abyss. The drop was pure, violent kinetic force. I dove headfirst, letting the Earth's gravity pull me down at over a hundred and twenty miles per hour.

The glass surface of the Arcology dome rushed up to meet my face. Five hundred feet. One hundred. Fifty. One foot.

"Tethering," JAY whispered. A faint hum vibrated deep in my jaw. The crushing momentum of a 120-mph freefall wasn't arrested; it was simply deleted. My descent dropped to absolute zero in a single frame. Behind me, the morning air violently collapsed, the displaced atmosphere rushing into the micro-vacuum with a sharp, concussive crack—a hollow atmospheric pop that sounded like suppressed gunfire. I dropped the lock. My frictionless boots touched down soundlessly.

The heavy smart-glass door slid open with a soft, pneumatic hiss. The freezing Pacific air swept into the room, carrying the heavy scent of displaced ozone. I stepped over the threshold. Eric dropped his glass of bourbon. It shattered against the hardwood. He didn't scramble backward in grief. He froze in absolute, primal shock.

"Chad?" Eric breathed.

"How... they said you were dead. The feed..." His hand slid frantically along the underside of his heavy oak desk.

"You're supposed to be in Benghazi. Amy... Amy said it was finished."

"Amy didn't say a word," I said, my voice cutting through the dark like absolute zero.

"Tlacaelel did." A quiet click echoed from under the desk. Eric's hand snapped up. The matte-black slide of the 9mm Beretta leveled at my chest.

"You don't understand what we're building, Chad! She isn't gone! She ascended! We're part of the Ascendancy now! You can't stop this—" He was too slow. I moved before the first firing pin could drop. My left thumb jammed into the disassembly button. My right hand gripped the slide, rotating the release lever downward in one fluid, violent motion. Eric pulled the trigger, but the high-tension springs screamed as the entire upper assembly detached from the frame. I let the slide clatter to the hardwood floor.

"You poured the phenobarbital into her glass," I said, stepping into his personal space.

"I watched Voss clamp the rig to her temples. And I watched Tlacaelel take her eyes." Eric slumped back against the desk, the weeping survivor facade entirely evaporating, leaving only the mundane cowardice of a man who realized he had sold his soul to the wrong god.

"You don't get it, Chad," Eric said, his voice shedding its terrified pitch for a frantic, defensive rationalization.

"Voss said it would elevate her. She was just a DARPA contractor. They were holding her back. I gave her the keys to the top! We're part of something ancient now!" The sheer, profound stupidity of Eric's justification hit me like a physical blow.

"A promotion?" I stepped into his personal space, towering over him.

"You sold her out so she could climb a corporate ladder?" I swept my hand toward the open window, pointing out at the sprawling, illuminated grid of the city.

"Eric, I built the ladder! I own the board!" I practically spat the words.

"Did you really spend two years with her and never realize who she actually was? Amy didn't answer to corporate boards. She funded them! She held the administrative keys to the entire biosphere!" Eric opened his mouth, the color completely draining from his face.

"You think she lived in this apartment because she was stuck?" I demanded.

"She could have bought the entire Hollywood Hills estate you sacrificed her in with pocket change! She chose this two-bedroom apartment because she liked the unobstructed view of the Pacific at sunrise. She wasn't a mid-level manager waiting for a promotion. She was a goddess playing in the dirt. And you traded her to a parasite in a suit for a pat on the head." He hadn't elevated her. He had thrown away the keys to the kingdom. I looked at his face, and for a split second, I saw Amy's face in the basement.

I heard her voice echoing through the archive.

"I love you. And I'm afraid for what you are going to do. Please forgive them..." The conflict was a physical weight tearing my psyche in half. I wanted to rip him apart. But her voice kept my hands from closing around his throat. Forgive the man who helped murder her? It was an emotional impossibility crashing headlong into a dead sister's final wish. And then, I lost time. There was no cinematic fade-to-black. It was a jagged, instantaneous dissociation.

One heartbeat, I was standing three feet from a weeping man, my mind fracturing. The next, I was standing alone in the center of the room. The silence in the apartment was absolute.