One Breath, One Bullet(The Borders War book 1) (13 page)

And me, with one breath, one bullet, sending them careening into each other.

I knew what type of rifle they were giving me. The Committee had sent a message to Neveed to make sure I was prepared before I entered the holding cell. As if there was any doubt. They’d chosen a gun I was more than proficient in. It was a Winchester rifle built in 2058. One that I’d practised on countless times in my life. In fact, the first real gun I’d ever fired.

The bullet inside this gun wouldn’t be the standard .22 calibre. The Committee had ensured it would be loaded with a specialised explosive hollowpoint. More cannon than rifle in its power to destroy. There would be no question to the intention of my shot. And no escape for my victim.

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” a voice at my shoulder stated.

“As have I,” I answered, turning towards Ahriman Blanc, the Chair of the Olympic Committee and the Opposition’s second in command.

He was dressed in the traditional uniform of the States—vermillion jacket and trousers with yellow piping. The stars and bars on his left shoulder proclaimed his rank as General. It had been Ahriman who had personally recruited me ten years ago as a double agent for the Opposition when the treaty was formally signed. And like the press corps, being in Ahriman’s presence unsettled me, no matter how much time I spent with him. He was emotionless, his eyes a black void that missed little and gave up none of his secrets.

“Indeed,” he mused as he took a drink from a champagne flute that looked too delicate in his talon-like hands.

“Any last-minute instructions?” I asked.

“I think the desired outcome is quite clear at this juncture,” he responded.

I nodded.

“Anything new from Ying?” he asked casually as he sipped from the glass.

I’d been feeding the Opposition with information about the infochip and the person tasked with decrypting it since I’d turned double agent. That it was false intel, misleading cues supplied to set them in the direction the President wanted to steer them, was a source of personal pride for me. I was determined that even if we were unable to decode everything contained on the chip, the Opposition would never take possession of its secrets either.

I gave a forlorn shake of my head, drawing my lips into a frown. “Nothing,” I responded. “Ying is stuck. Whatever key we thought we had has only gotten us partway. Ying has only touched the surface of the data.”

“I’m beginning to think the chip may not be what we are looking for,” Ahriman noted.

“What else is there?” I asked. “All the paper records were destroyed. Electronic as well after the nuclear detonation.”

Ahriman shrugged. It was a gesture that appeared much too casual and familiar for his wire-thin, lanky frame in that perfectly pressed and buttoned-up uniform. “Perhaps that old knowledge is lost. It wouldn’t be the first time. We are, quite literally, unable to catalogue what we aren’t aware ever existed.”

Except we were, in a way. There had been thousands of years of documented history before the paper purge. Decades more of time that had passed before those targeted electromagnetic pulses had fried the servers housing the records of our shared past. That nothing had survived those two cataclysmic events, except the fabled infochip, seemed impossible to me.

And who was to say that individual citizens hadn’t spirited away with their own collections of what remained? What they could carry and conceal even under the threat of death.

At one time information had been produced at a rate that saw the collective knowledge of the world doubled every day. That this vast resource of human history and experience had been successfully wiped clean, in a brutal bid by the Nationalists to restart civilisation from equal footing, was nonsensical.

Knowledge didn’t cease to exist because it was no longer documented. And humanity didn’t have a default setting button.

People remembered. They shared. Wisdom passed from generation to generation on hushed lips couldn’t be silenced. No matter how powerful the Opposition became. They wanted to possess the infochip so they could control its almost bottomless well of information.

While the Revolution wanted to free it.

Real bullets would be our first line of defence, but knowledge would be the lasting one.

Ahriman stood at my side for a heartbeat more and then took another drink. I wondered what he was thinking about, and if he had any idea what my true intentions were when I let that bullet fly. But Ahriman was as unreadable as ever.

“We’ve left a gift for you on the rifle,” he said cryptically. But before I could respond he started to turn away. Then he stopped and spoke over his shoulder, loud enough for the other Committee members around us to overhear. “Your parents are safe, Merq.”

My blood froze and I couldn’t restrain the involuntary straightening of my spine or the fact that I was holding my breath.

Ahriman rested a hand on my right shoulder. “Is there a problem?” he coolly asked.

I steeled myself and returned the plastic smile to my face. “Of course not. I wasn’t aware you knew they were still alive. But I’m grateful you’ve offered them sanctuary.”

Ahriman raised an eyebrow. “Sanctuary,” he said as if he was considering the word. “I suppose that word fits.” And with that he left me staring into the stadium, unblinking.

I didn’t have time to consider the overt threat of Ahriman’s words. The Opposition was holding my parents as insurance. And there was nothing I could do about it now. When I shot the Premiere instead of the President there was a good chance I was also ending their lives.

But the choice to save them had never been mine.

And I knew they would be willing sacrifices for the Revolution.

So I couldn’t worry, couldn’t grieve. Ahriman thought that by taking them he was buying my compliance. He couldn’t have been more wrong. He’d solidified my resolve. I wouldn’t allow the Opposition to grow in power.

The sergeant approached me, a scowl marring his face. “It’s time,” he said in a twisted mirror of Armise’s last words to me.

I ignored the expectant faces of the Committee and followed him to the glass doors. They were swept open in a flourish of music that assaulted my ears. The crowd cheered and waved flags. The athletes parted, revealing a blood-red carpet that led to the stage one hundred metres away. Flashes went off all around me and people reached out to touch me as I passed. But I couldn’t focus on anything besides the table looming in front of me.

I felt Armise’s eyes on me. As always. But this time it was different.

I didn’t know where he was in the crowd, but that didn’t matter. Despite Neveed’s misgivings, I knew Armise would be there when I needed him the most. I supposed a part of me had suspected that for a while now. Hope didn’t take hold in a void. I’d seen enough of it in those around me to know that much.

It was freeing to acknowledge that when I became the most hunted man on the planet, Armise would be there.

I was able to tear my gaze away from the rifle long enough to study the gigantic layers of rounded silver stages that appeared to ripple down the natural slope of the stands, like a waterfall over boulders or a rushing riverbed descending from the side of the stadium. In the middle of the elaborate arrangement, at least thirty metres in the air, the heads of the five countries were seated in oversized titanium thrones that were angular and sleek.

The President looked nervous. I was sure that was a calculation on his part.

Because he knew he wasn’t my target.

A driving beat filled the air and I was ushered onto a smaller stage set below the dais where a woman sang in a language I didn’t recognise. Her voice melded so perfectly with the music that I couldn’t tell what of the melody was her and what was violin.

Ninety metres above me the unlit Olympic torch towered over the stadium, its curved metallic sides reflecting the bursts of flashes and the light that danced across the field in symphony with the music.

I stepped into place and took a deep breath. The rifle was positioned on a simple mahogany table and across it laid three blades of switchgrass. Switchgrass that had been dipped in blood.

We’ve left a gift for you on the rifle,
Ahriman had said.

Three blades of switchgrass was the insignia of the Opposition. And the blood, I could be sure, was from my parents. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and picked up the stalks. I bundled them together, touched them to my forehead in a sign of respect that I nearly choked on, and then set them on the table, off to the side.

I lifted the rifle, my right hand on the smooth wooden stock and my left against the frigid steel of the barrel. Guns, whether real or sonic, were inanimate and innocuous objects until placed into the hands of someone who knew how to manipulate their potential. This gun was no exception. And my hands were more skilled than most.

The rifle was heavy. These ancient guns had much more heft than the modern sonicrifles, but I was used to the weight.

On the table sat one bullet. It was cool between my fingers as I slid it into the chamber and then cocked it into place.

The music soared and I shouldered the weapon, the right side of my body mercifully numb from the surge. I aimed the rifle at the small, metallic target above the leaders’ heads. The pressure on the metal disc was designed to light the Olympic flame when I hit the bullseye. But while I aimed at the target, I was already preparing to shift my focus down and to the left, where the Premiere of Singapore sat next to the President.

Besides the music, the stadium, filled with hundreds of thousands of citizens, was eerily silent. Waiting.

I inhaled, readjusted my aim, and took my shot.

The Premiere’s head exploded, more blood than I’d ever seen in my life. The gasp from the crowd was so immense it felt like the stadium itself was breathing. And I understood why this type of war was the only way for human beings to fathom the steep price of freedom once again.

For the first time in all of the kill shots I’d ever made, profound sadness overtook me. So many more would die because of what I’d just done. But before I could fully process the sonicrifles aimed in my direction, or the chaos spreading through the stadium, I felt Armise’s arms around me and we were gone.

The Revolution had begun.

Index

Timeline of the Borders War

2058 - Winchester rifle built that will be fired in the Opening Ceremony

2256 - Last Olympic games held

2256 - Singapore takes over China after nuclear meltdown and the economy collapses

2258 - Borders War officially starts with Singapore’s attempt to take over Australia and Russia

2268 - Merq Grayson (Merq’s great-grandfather, six generations removed) is born

2308 - Sonicbullet is invented by Merq Grayson and his name is officially classified

2348 - Last real bullet fired during war

2352 - Paper records are purged and transferred to electronic format

2417 - Targeted electromagnetic pulses destroy all records, and the existence of one remaining infochip begins as a rumour

2493 - Merq’s dad, Lucien Grayson, born

2503 - Merq’s mom, Tallitia Grayson, born

2519 - Armise Darcan born

2520 - Opposition rises, Revolution followers form in response

2523 - Merq born

2528 - Merq’s parents “die” in the attack on the capital that places President Kersch in power

2539 - Merq and Neveed Niaz (“Coach”) start sleeping together

2541 - Neveed becomes Merq’s handler and coach, Merq meets Armise in Bogotá through the eye of the rifle scope

2542 - Merq learns from analysts who Armise is

2545 - Jegs is captured in Singapore, and during her rescue Armise kisses Merq for the first time

2546 - Armise begins working for the States, and the DCR standoff occurs where Merq acquires the infochip and takes Armise’s finger in the process

2548 - The treaty officially ending the Borders War is signed, Merq is recruited by Ahriman to be a part of the Opposition, Merq and Armise meet up in Bogotá

2553 - Planning and construction begins for holding the first Olympics in over three hundred years in the capital city of the States

2558 - Merq reignites the Borders War when he assassinates the Premiere of Singapore, who is also the leader of the Opposition

Characters

Merq Grayson - Peacemaker and sniper for the Continental States