The Impossible Future: Complete set Frank Kennedy (freenovel24 .TXT) 📖

He stared at the screen, his blood raging.

“That’s how he ends? By saying he’s in love, so he can’t be nuts?” He threw a wine glass into the dunes. “If I could wrap my hands around his neck, I’d choke the life out of that bastard.”

He pushed his chair away and made for the beach. By the time he reached the sand, which curled between his toes, Michael keeled over. He wanted to vomit dinner but produced dry heaves. He was empty but for the rage and the lingering nightmares.

Michael had watched the vids over and over for weeks. The blast carving out nine levels of SkyTower. The debris raining down on Philadelphia Redux like firebombs. The desperate attempts to evacuate the tower and every city within 700 miles before its superstructure gave way. Its collapse six hours later, the segments breaking apart on a southeast trajectory into the Atlantic. The 300-foot tidal wave that wiped out most of New Stockholm in seconds. Rescue and recovery operations that took weeks; death lists still growing. The missing assumed lost in the nuclear explosion or drowned deep in the Atlantic.

In the first days, as he prayed for Samantha to recover, Michael hoped for a misunderstanding. He hoped the rumor of a ship leaving the blast zone and disappearing from UG system trackers was misplaced. Then came the survivors and their testimony. Michael hoped no more.

At the surf’s edge, he stiffened when Samantha draped her arms around from behind and laid her head against him.

“Why, Sam? You knew what it would do to me.”

“Yes. And if you found out I kept it from you?”

Her took her point. She had no choice.

“How did he do it? He’s not even in the solar system anymore, if the reports are right.”

“I’m not sure. At first, I assumed he had help. There aren’t many who can break into admin-level stacks. I assume Ophelia Tomelin. We thought his parents were lost, but who knows for sure? There were those so-called sightings at Ganymede Station and Xavier’s Garden. No, Michael. I thought about it all afternoon, then I remembered what he said to us on the way to Redux. ‘All I need is a keyword, and I know everything about it.’ What if he’s just reached a point where he doesn’t need help from anybody?”

Michael’s heart fell. “He controls it all. Life. Death. The future. He is a god.” He pushed off Samantha and stepped away. “The Bible predicted Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Hell, he has nine riding shotgun. You know damn well he was behind the attack on that base holding the hybrids. All eight of them – poof! What d’ya bet Ophelia’s up there right now training those lunatics to follow their true master?”

“Those are rumors. We don’t have any proof. The witnesses …”

“You mean the ones left alive because they hid the best?”

“Michael, we are still trying to gain more information about …”

He cupped a hand over her mouth. “Enough already. Seriously. Stop minimizing anything that son of a bitch does. Sam, we can’t run from this anymore. That message? Think about it. The first part was meant for me. He started with the day we met. The second part was meant for you. He wanted to tell you he found somebody better. And the third? That was for us both. He is taunting us, Sam. He’s also reminding us.”

His right hand twitched, as it often did when he allowed himself to think of the long night.

“Michael. What?”

Michael’s rage subsided as the guilt took over. He gritted his teeth and tried his damndest to hold back the sobs.

“He killed one hundred thirty thousand people. One. Thirty.”

“You saw the security evidence, Michael. They surrounded him. They were going to execute him and Rayna.”

“So why didn’t he let it happen? Two lives for a hundred thirty thousand. He killed them because he loved what he was, he loved Rayna, and he didn’t care about the rest of us anymore. He wasn’t just sending a message to the Chancellors about how powerful he was. He was thanking you and me for making him possible.”

Her eyes narrowed into vicious slits.

“Michael, do not put this on us! Jamie did this. He is responsible.”

“Jamie did nothing. It was James Bouchet, or whatever the hell he’s out there calling himself. Look, we’ve been dancing around this for four months. People like Agatha Bidwell were right – he needed to be killed. They realized what these hybrids were. So did Jamie. He wanted to die. He went into the woods alone to kill himself. The Mentor stopped him, but when Agatha got her shot, he surrendered. She put eight bullets in him.”

He fell to his knees. “It should have ended there. But you and me couldn’t let that shit go. We had to protect him from the Queen Bee. He was dead when we showed up, but he came back to save us from the Shock Units. He broke every rule about life and death. And now, he controls it all. Why? Because of you and me. We followed him here. We believed in him. We fought for him.”

Sam joined him in the sand. “We didn’t know. How could we?”

“We knew because Jamie knew. Every day I get two images stuck in my head. First, the tidal wave destroying New Stockholm. The second one, I made up. We’re sitting by that creek after he came back to life. I see myself pull out a pistol and blow his brains out.

“I knew, Sam. You, too. We brought that monster here. We took down SkyTower as sure as he did. We set him free on the galaxy. We started a civil war about controlling the future of hybrids and immortals. He knows it, too. And that message? He’s thanking us.”

The last slice of sun dimmed