Final Empire (21 page)

“Eight,” I said, holding up a hand. “Please, Todd. I’ll leave right now. Eight hours, max, and I’ll report back, I promise. Are we cool?”

He groaned and grumbled, pitching back in his chair. I knew he was going to cave in, but he had to make a show of it – using his body language to convey the moral objections he had to my less-than-reasonable request.

“Fine,” he finally blurted out with a pronounced sigh. “But if my ass gets canned for this, you owe me a new job.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed with a smile. “I’ll have to check with HR, but I’m pretty sure I have an opening in my mapology department.”

Ask your friends to suit up, grab a machine gun and march into enemy territory with you and no one bats an eye.
Suggest a field trip so we can reunite with an old friend, and everyone loses their minds.

McGarrity, always up for an adventure, volunteered before I could finish the question. He knew nothing of Kenneth Livitski, of course, aside from what everyone else knew: that he was the overly-enthusiastic, pudgy, and almost comically-dressed cosplayer who participated in the original Arena Mode tournament. Kenneth and I became quick friends, but early in the competition he was stabbed. I saw it happen, but as he lay on the Manhattan sidewalk motionless and bleeding, I had no way to help; I’d lied to Kenneth (as well as the rest of the world) about possessing super human abilities. While he bled, I ran. He was airlifted to a nearby hospital, clinging to life.

For most people, that was the last they’d seen or heard from The Living Eye. His costume sat folded neatly in a dresser next to his hospital bed, collecting dust, along with the rest of his worldly possessions. While he lay in a coma, I continued on with my life…until the day when his cord was pulled, and he rose like a phoenix from the ashes. He was pulsing with electric blue energy, muscular, powerful, beaming with a confidence I’d never seen in him before. He was
better
than new: he’d been reborn.

After disappearing into the distance with Valeryia Taktarov, Kenneth was never seen or heard from again – at least not by me, or any media outlets I’d tuned into. And now, he’d settled on an apparently uninhabitable island, where scores of people were disappearing to; secluded and barren, the already-creepy island chain was now becoming a modern-day Bermuda Triangle. But instead of aircraft, human bodies were disappearing at an alarming rate, and I needed to know why.

Peyton and Gavin were willing to tag along for that very reason. They wanted to get settled back in New York, although this situation had piqued their interest. They knew Kenneth primarily through my anecdotes and what they’d seen on the simulcasts. The first time they’d seen him in person was the day before, when he’d blazed into the Liwa Desert to save our lives.

Brynja was unreachable. She’d been locked in her room since we’d returned, refusing any medical treatment for the wide gash that stretched across her forearm. The fact that she’s bled a substance that was definitely
not
blood had caught her off-guard to say the least, and then, seemingly, sent her spiraling into a depression. She wanted to know who she was, and how she fit into this world. More than that, she wasn’t even sure
what
she was, and this just led to more questions we had no answers for. Brynja assured me through a text message that she didn’t require any stitches, and that the cut had already mended itself, leaving no trace that there had even been the slightest scratch. And when I asked if she’d tag along for our visit to the Desolation Islands she never replied.

I made my way across the rooftop tarmac, drenched in a bright orange haze that filtered through ragged clouds. The ocean, the panoramic mountain-chain, the fresh sea air…it was like poison to my senses. After yesterday’s battle I wanted nothing more than to lock myself in a dark, windowless room with a stack of vintage graphic novels and every video game emulator I could find. But this had to be done.

“What do ya think?” Karin shouted as she bounced from one foot to the other, both index fingers pointing squarely towards the jet.

The TT-100 jet had been scrubbed clean of its midnight-black paint job, returned to its former luster; the shimmering gold finish reflected like a mirror. In the midday sun it was difficult to even look in its direction.

“How many times did you polish that thing?” I laughed.

Her smile beamed as bright as the hull. “You mean since I woke up this morning, or just in the last ten minutes?” 

A staircase lowered from its underbelly and we stepped aboard, awaiting Gavin and Peyton. Karin strapped herself into the cockpit chair while I sat behind her in the compact six-seat fuselage.

“So,” Karin asked, flipping a dial on the dash, “I got the updated passenger manifest from Bethany. No Brynja on this trip?”

“Guess not.”

She pivoted around, peering over her shoulder. “Hmm. You’d think she’d want to know a lot more about Kenneth…weren’t they buddies back in Arena Mode?”

“Yeah, definitely. She’s dealing with some stuff right now, though. It’s complicated. But when Kenneth showed up yesterday…I don’t know. Something was going on with him. It was the energy he was giving off. I could feel it. I think she did too.”

Karin shrugged. “You never know, he might be suffering from PTSD after everything that went down in Arena Mode.
Or
he could have brain damage after being in a coma for so long.”

Peyton stepped aboard with Gavin in tow.

“She’s right,” Peyton agreed. She slipped into the seat next to me, pulling the lap band across and snapping it into place. “I don’t think you should press the guy so hard. He’s been through a lot. If he’s on some deserted island it probably means he wants privacy.”

I shook my head. “Whatever he’s been through, what happened yesterday was just...”

“Off?” Gavin asked.

“How the hell did he get there
so fast,
” I asked, now growing more agitated. “He got all the way to the Liwa Desert in a split second. And how did he even know we were there?”

“Maybe it was just meant to be,” Peyton offered, her pink lips turning up at the corners. She was baiting me.

I groaned. “So help me, if you say the ‘L’ word…”

“No, not
luck
,” she explained,  “I mean, maybe he was tracking Darmaki at the same time as we were, and when he saw us in trouble he jumped in to make the save? An old friend was watching out for us, and it was just some good timing. What’s wrong with that?”

It was a textbook example of
deus ex machina
. The timing was too perfect, the intervention too convenient. I didn’t buy it. “Why did he wait until that precise moment, then? It doesn’t make any sense. When we were getting swarmed by clones that might’ve been a better time to join the party, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Gavin added, “but he
did
pull through in the end. That’s what counts, right?”

The last thing that Kenneth had said to me was burned into my memory. Not just his statement, but the grave, unforgiving tone that cut through his words, blasting a hole in my gut. He swore that he’d never help me again, and warned me never to seek him out. Then the second I needed him – the precise
moment
– he appeared, pulling my hapless ass from the proverbial fire.

“This was no coincidence,” I said flatly. “There’s no such thing.”

“Oh, come on,” Peyton said, “coincidences happen all the time. And what’s the difference anyway? Maybe you should just be happy to be alive?”

“I
am
happy,” I stated, pointing to the grin I’d painted across my strained, unshaven face. “See? Smiling, ear to ear. But a
lot
of people are missing, and if Kenneth is there, and if he
did
have something to do with it…”

Gavin stared at me with a deep, concerned line forming on his brow. “Hey, Mox, it’s okay…we were
all
rattled after yesterday. It’s okay to just move on from it, and try to—”

“I CAN’T,” I thundered, causing him to lean away. “All right? I can’t ‘just move on’ when
he’s
out there. Didn’t you guys see him yesterday? He looked at me like I was a stranger. He might be shell-shocked after Arena Mode, messed up after the coma…we don’t know what’s going on inside his head.”

“You didn’t make him this way,” Peyton whispered.

I buried my face in my hands, letting my head fall back against the wall. “And I didn’t
stop
him from becoming this, either.”

McGarrity climbed aboard. He sensed the tension in the aircraft and for once, opted to keep his goddamned mouth shut about it.

The staircase lifted seamlessly back into place with a low hiss, popping closed, sealing shut. Karin flipped another switch on the cockpit’s dash and the jet purred, soft as a newborn kitten. The engines were so advanced you could barely detect whether they’d been powered on. The cabin lights dimmed.

“Okay, kids,” Karin said, sounding more like a school teacher than a pilot. “Buckle your seatbelts and get ready to teleport. There won’t be an in-flight movie because this is only going to take, like, three seconds.”

We were engulfed by tendrils of purple lightning before winking off the tarmac, appearing high above the Indian Ocean.

The TT-100 hovered in place as if we were still sitting on solid ground.
I asked Karin to pull around and tilt the aircraft, affording us a better look at the floating land mass below. From overhead the Desolation Islands look like jagged stones floating in a sea of steel-grey water, their peaks lightly dusted with snow. Some low cloud cover obscured most of the details.

“Can you give us a better look without getting any closer?” I asked.

Karin shook her head. “Sorry, boss. This jet is just a prototype. It’s not equipped with any advanced satellite imaging or long-range scopes. I am getting some power readings along the eastern peninsula of the main island, though.”

I messaged Detective Dzobiak on my com and asked if he’d been able to retrieve any satellite shots of the islands. He wasn’t. They were still in the process of getting the authorization to reposition one of their cameras.

“All right,” I said with a heavy dose of uncertainty, not at all sure if I was about to make the right decision. “Let’s put her down on the coast and we’ll go in on foot.”

Karin set our aircraft down in the rust-colored sand that made up the coastline. Beyond the coast were stretches of grass, leading to rugged mountains that jutted from the island; some squat and wide, loosely draped in vegetation, while others loomed in the distance, capped in white, piercing the low-hanging clouds.

McGarrity stepped out onto the beach and rubbed his arms for warmth. His t-shirt was providing as much warmth as it did protection. The sun was bright but the wind blew in chilling gusts, as I told him it likely would on an island so close to Antarctica. He grumbled about the weather and his breath floated from his lips in a frosty plume – something I’m sure the Texas native wasn’t accustomed to. Before we left I’d informed him that his Reeboks would be less than helpful during a potentially long walk as well, though again, he scoffed at my advice.

Peyton, Gavin and I were dressed in flannels, jeans and hiking boots with our fitted smart-fiber gear concealed beneath. Definitely better-suited to the craggy, uneven terrain we faced. I didn’t know what to expect if we ran into Kenneth – or anyone else on this island, for that matter – and I wasn’t about to take any chances. Some small, carefully concealed firearms were tucked into shoulder holsters, hidden beneath our jackets.

I glanced back at the jet. “Stay out of view,” I said into my com. “I’ll shout if we need you.”

From the cockpit Karin gave me a salute and silently whisked the TT-100 up into the clouds.

I was gazing out at the vista, marveling at the island’s unique scenery when I heard Gavin shouting behind me. “Dude, check this out!” He was jogging out towards the coast, where something jutted curiously from the shallow water.

We moved in to inspect the object, which looked like part of a mast; a splintered shard of wood, several feet long, with a tattered length of cloth hanging lifelessly from its tip. The fabric floated in the knee-deep water, waving like a flag in surrender.

Peyton used her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, searching the open sea. “If this is just part of a ship, where’s the
rest
of it? And who was aboard?”

“Maybe the survivors can tell us.” McGarrity said, motioning towards the stretch of dirt that led towards the core of the island. There weren’t any discernible footsteps, but there was certainly a path. It was well-worn, beaten into the rock and dirt, cutting through the vegetation in the distance.