Chương 197: The Fires of Heaven (01/06/2016)

DATE: Wednesday, January 6, 2016 LOCATION: The Draven (Low Earth Orbit) LOCAL TIME: 07: 15 AM CET My eyes snapped open inside the cockpit. Psychologists call them intrusive thoughts. Bleed-overs. Ghosts from a past life trying to take the wheel. I didn't have a whisper. I had a name. I took the grieving brother and I buried him. I shattered the glass separating my present from the ancient, cold thing that had protected me since Carlsbad. I let Lamech take the wheel. Only the Operator remained.

Scan the local exosphere. S-type chondrite. Intercept. Spool the barycentric gravity amplifiers. Engage the dual tether. Lock primary to the asteroid and secondary to the chalet. I need to pull this asteroid through the Earth. Give me a high-velocity anchor transiting the opposite side of the planet. A pale blue streak illuminated on the holographic display: Comet 2P/Encke, approaching at one hundred and fifty-four thousand miles per hour. Disengage the surface tether. Lock secondary to the comet. Anchor locked.

But vengeance required an audience. Patch me into the global carrier wave. Target: NBC Studios. The Tonight Show. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. A secondary window opened, pulling the live feed from Burbank. It was 10: 00 PM on the West Coast. NBC had scrapped their scheduled programming. My brother, Neil, sat behind the iconic wooden desk, his tie loose and his eyes red. Sitting across from him were James Spader and Drew Barrymore.

"... and the bass in this club was just deafening," James was saying, leaning forward with a somber smile.

"I was twenty-seven, trying to look cool, and then your eleven-year-old brother leaned over and told me, 'Excuse me, James, but I have to go see about a girl.' Then I just watched Chad walk through the crowd like he owned the place."

"He was always doing that," Drew Barrymore said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

"Protecting people." Neil nodded, his voice cracking.

"I don't know how we're supposed to do this without him."

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, Neil," I said. My voice boomed out of the monitors in Burbank. Neil froze.

"Chad? How...? They said you were gone."

"I had to kick a third onside," I replied. Down in the Swiss Alps, I ordered the ship to activate the media consoles in the chalet. Richter stumbled backward in horror. Tlacaelel went perfectly still.

"Chad... where are you?" Neil asked.

"Is someone trying to take a shot at the title?" I looked down through the viewport at the swirling clouds.

"I'm exactly where I need to be," I said to Neil. I projected my final thought into the command cradle.

"Eight ball, corner pocket," I whispered.

"Seventy and sevenfold." Execute. The rock was yanked downward, accelerating to fifty thousand miles per hour. It detonated five kilometers above Lake Geneva. A sphere of pure light expanded. Amy, the Capstones, and the Teotl were erased on a sub-atomic level. The ship's display logged the destruction in silent text. Target destroyed. I turned The Draven away, engaging the stealth drives.

"JAY," I said aloud.

"Route a secure ping to my brother's terminal. Use the old cipher."

"Ready for input." The words formed in my mind. A third onside kick. Tlacaelel took Amy. I had to stop her. I'm sorry. I closed my eyes. I couldn't send it. I would be telling them their sister was a monster. And that I was the one who killed her. The brother would break. But I was the only one who knew. Lamech carries the sin so the family doesn't have to. The Operator swallows the poison so the boy survives.

"Cancel ping," I whispered, the voice no longer sounding entirely like my own.

"Ping cancelled. Awaiting orders."

"Take us back into the shadow," I said. I sat in the cold, humming dark of the cockpit, entirely alone.