Minutemen- Parallel Lives Read online

  No. No, she really wasn't. Kaylan shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes.

  “But I’ve given serious thought to how Vikings honor their dead. Gabe told me about it, so long ago, back when he was...anyway. They won’t honor me if they find out I did...what I did. Hide the evidence for me, Kay, please. And don’t come back here.”

  “How...how soon—”

  “Very.” Jess started crying. Kaylan noticed her tears were pink. Soon they would be red. Very soon. “Please,” her voice rose. “Please leave now and don’t come back.”

  Crying, Kaylan turned, grabbed the bowl, and walked out the door. Midway through burying the container behind the hut, she thought about the Vikings figuring out what Jessica had done. The berries left a body in a particular state—blood draining from every opening. Then she remembered, this was Jess. She’d make sure, somehow, that the tribe would not know.

  When she finished piling the last of the dirt on top of the bowl, she heard Jess scream. “I’m coming, Gabe. I’m coming to see you again, baby.”

  Kaylan slowly walked back to the settlement. She found Jon, not bothering to hide the sorrow on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Jon’s tone made Kaylan think he had forgotten all about their fight at breakfast.

  “It’s Elder Jessica,” she said. “When I got there, she...she...” Kaylan didn’t finish her sentence on purpose. She felt terrible for this one last lie she told her husband, but it was Jess’s last wish to be given a Viking funeral.

  “Stay here,” Jon said.

  Kaylan knew that Jess would not want her to see the empty shell that was now Jess’s body, but Jess was her friend.

  So she joined the small band of Vikings who retrieved Jess’s body. She helped them build the pyre on a skiff they used to send her flaming body out to sea. And she bore witness to the funeral of the woman who saved her ten years ago.

  “It is done,” Jon said. “Let’s go home.”

  My thoughts exactly, Kaylan thought.

  “I’d like to stay out here a little longer,” she answered. “Alone.” She stared at the raging fire on the calm night sea. She didn’t watch her husband turn and walk away. She waited five minutes. More than enough time for Jon to be far enough away.

  “I really liked this view,” Kaylan said. She sighed and took the device she had obtained at Jessica’s house.

  She pressed the top button.

  ***

  2075. It took the Guardians just under forty-eight hours to attack. Thomas Kildere had smiled as Damien Thorpe had screamed at him to stay within the walls of TPC headquarters that first night after the Guardians’ message was relayed to everyone in the world.

  “If the world is going to end, Damien, I’m going to do my damnedest to drink myself into a coma before it does,” he had said.

  The first night he let his U-Board buzz with unanswered calls from his ex-wife as he tried to drown himself in actual alcohol—Jack Daniels—at Jumpin’ Jack Flash, the only establishment in Denver that still served it, along with the inhalers everyone else served.

  The second night he went home and took the yelling and crying she threw his way. Then they went to bed, wide awake and embracing each other throughout the night.

  The morning of the attack, as Kildere traveled to TPC in his slot car, he noticed the sunlight dim and brighten, as if clouds were moving in front of it.

  “Odd, no sign of rain or clouds in the forecast,” he muttered. Then he looked up.

  A fleet of twenty ships blanketed the sky. They were different sizes, different shapes. All were black and seemed to suck the light from the sky.

  “My God.” Kildere couldn’t stop staring at them while his car drove to the TPC campus.

  He ignored everyone asking him if he knew what was going on—of course he knew. But what good would come from him telling those who didn’t know? Death by naiveté must be better than knowing your death is impending.

  He took the elevator to the twenty-first floor, expecting to ask Damien’s assistant if Damien was in, but she wasn’t at her desk. Kildere suspected she wasn’t even in the building.

  He opened the door to Damien’s office and found Damien’s son, Travis, pacing the room. The CEO himself sat in his chair, appearing to contemplate something that was beyond everyone’s reach: how to escape what was coming.

  “Father, we have to leave. Now!” Travis yelled.

  Thorpe stared at him. “And go where, exactly?”

  “I don’t know—anywhere but here!” Travis screamed in frustration. His arms were flailing as he paced the room. “You told us the Guardians would come for you. Don’t you think hiding in a white marble building you can see from space is not the best idea?”

  Damien stood and leaned heavily on his silver cane. “I am not hiding,” he said with his weight behind it.

  Kildere knew Damien was telling the truth. He wasn’t hiding. Kildere had never seen that look before; Damien’s eyes were lacking his usual life and fire. Kildere guessed Damien had just given up, that the most Damien could hope for was a quick, dignified death.

  “YOUR TIME IS UP.”

  The same booming voice that came over the communications systems for the building two days ago made Kildere shudder as he heard it now.

  “Damien, we have to get you out of here,” he told his boss.

  “You and my sniveling son can scurry away like vermin if you so choose, Kildere.” Damien straightened his posture. “I will meet my end standing.”

  Kildere walked toward Damien and grabbed his hand.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Kildere, what do you think—”

  Kildere heard a muffled explosion, and slowly they all walked to the large window in Damien’s office where they heard multiple pinging sounds, almost like large raindrops hitting a windshield. From their height, the squadron of TPC security looked like little black dots running along the white sidewalks below.

  The Guardians were large enough to be seen. There were close to a dozen of them, but they were sufficient. Kildere could see the beams emitting from the weapons they held, similar to the weapon the older version of Ms. Waters called a purifier.

  The Guardians walked through TPC’s security like they were a stiff wind and strode toward the lobby of the main building—the building the three men were in.

  “We’re too late,” Kildere muttered.

  “We’ve got to try something,” Travis pleaded. “Anything.”

  Kildere ran to Damien’s office door and looked down the hallway. It was just as quiet as when he had arrived five minutes ago.

  “Guardian, is anyone coming up the elevator?” Kildere asked, then cringed. Years of habit overrode reality.

  “YES. WE ARE IN THE ELEVATOR, AND WE ARE COMING FOR YOU,” the voice replied.

  Kildere slowly walked back into Damien’s office. He felt claustrophobic. He had to remind himself to breathe. He looked at Damien.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Damien crinkled his nose. “What for?”

  Kildere shrugged. “I just...I thought we had enough time to pull it off,” he said.

  Damien shook his head. “My destiny was shown to me years ago by my great-grandson, Kildere. Trying to fight against it all these years, only now do I realize that trying to change it was as foolhardy as a man standing on the gallows with a noose around his neck thinking he’ll live.”

  Kildere heard the quiet hiss of the elevator doors opening, and he closed his eyes. He didn’t see the center section of Damien’s office wall collapse into rubble, but he smelled a bitter odor from the granite and coughed on the granite dust. When he opened his eyes, he stared at a creature that stood from floor to ceiling. It looked like a dragon without the wings. He remembered seeing a stream of the old black-and-white movie Godzilla when he was a child. This Guardian wasn’t five hundred feet tall, but the top of its emerald-scaled reptilian head touched Damien’s ceiling. Its scales, its rows of sharp, pointed teeth—the Guardian was most
definitely not wearing a rubber suit. It carried a purifier, which was pointed at Damien.

  “Damien Thorpe. Of course we would find you sitting atop all you have built,” the Guardian said. Kildere imagined if snakes could talk, that’s how they would sound. Courssssse, sssssssitting. “You will not die today, blasphemer, but you will die.” Kildere could swear he saw the Guardian smile, an image he was sure would reside in his nightmares for the short time he’d be alive.

  “We have plans for you,” it hissed.

  “You can go to hell,” Travis yelled and grabbed the purifier he had brought with him, one of the prototypes Damien had been working on the past month. He took aim at the Guardian’s beady black eyes and fired.

  Nothing happened.

  The Guardian laughed. “What is that thing?”

  Travis ran full speed, purifier out in front of him. Kildere could see him repeatedly pressing the fire button. The Guardian picked Travis up by his neck—the Guardian’s large, clawed hand almost covered Travis’s head—and ripped the purifier away from him.

  “I don’t know who gave you our designs, but if this truly is one of our weapons, we built them not to harm us.”

  Travis made a sickening moan, which stopped abruptly when the Guardian snapped his neck and tossed him aside.

  Kildere noticed Damien take a half-step toward his son, then froze as the Guardian aimed his purifier once more at him.

  “You will be punished for your sins, Damien Thorpe.”

  Kildere closed his eyes. He heard the slight electronic hum and assumed Damien joined his son in death. A moment later, it would be his turn.

  “Sorry, lizard, I get to kill him first.”

  The familiar voice coming from the hallway made Kildere open his eyes. Damien was, in fact, not dead. The Guardian swayed once, twice, trying to turn toward the voice.

  Kildere jumped as he saw four beams of light pulse and find their home in the giant reptile’s midsection.

  “Impossible,” the Guardian muttered, then fell like an old oak.

  Jessica Waters appeared in the doorway. Kildere felt a chill as he looked at her. Everything that made her light and bubbly and fun was now gone. Her eyes had an angry stare; her long blond hair was now just stubble. She once laughed at the thought of wearing a uniform; now she was dressed in black—shirt, shoes, and pants—and wore an army-green jacket.

  Jessica pushed the Guardian with her foot.

  “Agent Waters?” Kildere kept staring at her.

  Jessica aimed the purifier at Kildere’s head, causing him to put his hands up.

  “I told you not to call me that,” she said flatly. “Put your hands down, you look ridiculous.”

  “Alpha, I’ve looked around for Travis. I couldn’t find—”

  Gabriel Stern entered the room and cut his report short when he saw Travis on the floor, dead. His head was almost perpendicular to his neck.

  “Alpha?” Damien finally found his voice. “You lead the Anarchists now, Agent Waters?” He walked toward her. “That’s treason.”

  Jessica quickly swung her purifier. It connected with Damien’s jaw, and he fell hard to the floor.

  “I love this thing,” she said with a smile. “It has so many uses.”

  Damien slowly rose, rubbing his chin. “How did you get that thing to work on the Guardian?” he asked.

  “I took this off the first lizard we killed,” Jessica said. “It occurred to me that they might equip it with a feature that kept us from using it against them. After all, if we could steal one, what would stop others? Just like any gun with a safety.” She shrugged. “Remove the safety, and you’re in business.”

  “We need to get that thing to research right away,” Damien’s voice rose. “If we can mass-produce them—”

  “Delta!” Jessica screamed, cutting Damien off. “What’s our clock?”

  From out in the hallway, a woman’s voice answered, “Three, four minutes tops before they realize we’re up here. The closest lizard is patrolling the fifteenth floor.”

  Jessica aimed her purifier at Damien. “We are leaving here in three minutes. You have thirty seconds to tell me where Kaylan Smith is, or I’m going to blast your head off.”

  Kildere took a step toward her but stopped when he saw Gabriel had a purifier of his own; he aimed it at Kildere’s head while shaking his own.

  “There were no more Anarchists left,” Damien yelled at her. “Why are you starting another terrorist group now?”

  “Now you have fifteen seconds,” Jessica said.

  “She’s not here,” Kildere blurted.

  “I see that, Kildere. Where is she?”

  Kildere was about to answer when Damien put his hand on his shoulder.

  “You want your answer, Agent Waters, you take us with you,” he said. “Or feel free to shoot us now. I’m sure it would be preferable to what the Guardians have planned for us.”

  Jessica kept her weapon on Damien. No one moved.

  “Alpha!” the woman in the hallway called out.

  “What?” Jessica screamed back.

  “They’re on their way up.” The woman laughed. “They’re actually using the elevator.”

  “That’s good,” Gabriel said, still holding his weapon level, toward Kildere’s midsection. “That means there will only be one of them.”

  “I’m sure you have a back way out of here, Thorpe. Am I right?”

  Damien nodded. “The door next to Kildere’s office leads to a small elevator that exits to the executive garage. To my car.”

  Kildere looked at him. “I always wondered what that door was for.

  “And I’m assuming it has all sorts of cloaking tech to keep it from prying eyes?”

  “To keep it from any competitor’s eyes,” Damien acknowledged. “It was built toward the end of the Corporate Wars.”

  “Talk about hedging your bets,” Gabriel said.

  “Alpha!”

  Jessica waved her purifier. “I’m sure you have to activate the door. After you.”

  “What assurances do I have that you won’t just dump us once we give you what you want?” Damien asked.

  “We have to go get my wife,” Kildere heard himself say.

  “Alpha!” the woman screamed.

  “We need to go,” Gabriel hissed. “Now.”

  “Look, Kildere, the only reason you’re coming is because Thorpe made it a condition.” Jessica smiled.

  Kildere looked at Thorpe, who said nothing.

  “Well, there you go,” Jessica said, her point made. “There’s your caring boss, Kildere. Now, are you coming or not?”

  Kildere stood there, watching them leave the room—Damien, then Jessica with her purifier pointed at Damien’s back, then Gabriel.

  Wiping tears from his eyes, Kildere left the room and joined them.

  MINUTEMEN: PARALLEL LIVES

  EARTH PRIME

  1

  J ESSICA prodded Thorpe down the hallway. They all crammed at the end, by the secret door. She felt Gabe’s breath on her neck and was sure that Delta had their backs, watching the elevator doors. Jessica would know when they open.

  “Let’s go, Thorpe,” Jessica hissed.

  “Believe me, Agent Waters, no one wants to leave here faster than I.”

  Jessica jabbed the purifier into Thorpe’s back. “What did I tell you about name calling?” she reminded him.

  “Alpha, we’ve got about thirty seconds,” Delta whispered.

  Jessica watched Thorpe hold his palm against the center of the door. Almost six months ago—a lifetime ago, it felt like—Jessica remembered arriving at the TPC campus for the first time. She remembered looking out the window of the slot vehicle as it seemed to be traveling toward a head-on collision with the wall of the main building. At the last minute, a section of the wall slid up so the vehicle avoided a collision.

  Now Thorpe’s emergency door did much the same, not opening inward or outward, but sliding up into the upper wall. Lights illuminated a small
rectangular room beyond, and everyone quickly entered.

  “It’s a box,” Gabriel said.

  The door slid down just as Jessica saw the elevator doors at the other end of the hall begin to part. How good was a Guardian’s eyesight? Hopefully not all that good. How well did they reason? Hopefully they would see their comrade and Travis, both deceased, and assume they killed each other. While they figured out how that would have happened, it would give them the extra time they needed.

  Look at Travis, Jessica thought. Still inadvertently saving our asses.

  “Why are you smiling?” Gabe whispered to her.

  Jessica shook her head.

  “This thing better be whisper quiet, Thorpe, or we’re all dead.” Jessica gestured toward Thorpe with the purifier.

  There were three buttons midway up the far wall of the elevator. From left to right, they read Penthouse, R&D, and Garage. Thorpe pushed Garage.

  The elevator moved like a slot car, and Jessica lost her balance for a moment at the initial lurch. She caught Thorpe moving toward her, toward the purifier, and she flicked the chamber up toward his face.

  “Go ahead, Thorpe. Make a move. I have no problem taking your head off. Kildere can give me the same answer you can.”

  Thorpe retreated to the corner.

  “How long until we reach the garage?” Gabriel asked.

  “Ten, fifteen seconds,” Thorpe answered. “This baby moves fast.”

  Delta looked back at Jessica.

  “Get ready,” she said. “Anything not human appears once the doors open, you blow it to hell.”

  Gabe followed Delta in aiming his purifier toward the door.

  It took longer than Jessica expected for the doors to open, but when they did, everyone stepped out onto clear, reinforced glass. A half-dozen slot cars—most costing more credits than Jessica would have made in ten years working for TPC—were lined up in a row in front of them.

  “My car is around the corner,” Thorpe said, walking at a faster pace.

  Jessica cleared her throat and held Kildere and Gabe from moving. Thorpe turned around.