The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

temporal lobe. Jamie saw everything, as if highway directions mapped out on a phone. He made his next move.

Jamie stopped Ophelia before she ran, twisting one arm around her back and holding the weapon against her head.

“I’m already figuring out how to use this,” he said, as the earthquake maintained a steady intensity. “I won’t kill anybody else unless I have to. Move.”

They caught up to Michael and Sammie.

“How many are waiting for us?” He asked Ophelia.

“I cannot be sure, James. If our defense perimeter is holding, no one at the entrance will be a threat to you.”

“You mean like the fella who just tried to kill us all? I’m betting you didn’t see that coming, Ophelia.”

Just before they rounded a sharp bend, she replied, “No. He was working both sides. We did not recognize his …”

“You’re not as smart as you think. Your observers had the same problem. They turned on each other.”  He caught his friends’ desperate remembrance. “Sammie and me, we got nobody left from back there. Michael’s parents think he’s dead. And I killed …” He choked up, focusing on the path ahead without losing pace with his plan.

“Those Shock Units you sent in, Ophelia? If they hadn’t come … I stopped them, but I killed thousands of people when I did. I can’t ever come back from that. You understand what I’m saying?”

The trembling subsided.

“To be honest, James, I do not,” she said. “If you are the Jewel reborn, whatever you did was always part of your potential.”

Jamie stopped. The others did likewise. “A Berserker. My brother told me. A whole army of us. That’s what you Chancellors been waiting for. Guess what, Ophelia? I got other plans, and I got nothing to lose.”

“Except them,” she said with defiance, pointing to Michael and Sammie. “You want nothing to happen to them, James. I will give you every assurance of their safety, even the ability to assimilate into the Collectorate and forge productive lives. Although that one,” she pointed to Michael, “will need to vacate Earth in due course.”

Michael turned his gun on her, as he kept Sammie close.

“Seriously, lady? Did I piss in your Corn Flakes? First, you make that African comment, now …”

“Coop …” Jamie started, but Sammie cut him off.

“Michael, it’s OK.” Her voice slurred. “You don’t know everything. We can’t do this now.” She cleared her throat and told Ophelia, “He doesn’t understand. Just keep us safe and get us out of here. We’ll work out the details later.”

Jamie saw a colder, hardened shadow in her eyes. The girl who shot down a helicopter, who spent years in paramilitary training with her parents, had reawakened. Ophelia must have also seen the Chancellor arise in Sammie, given her change of tone.

“Precisely, Miss Pynn. The four of us share a common purpose.” She looked down her nose at Michael. “Corn Flakes? James, if you will release me, I will lead us to the defense perimeter and with good fortune, to our transport. Yes?”

He let her go. “Just don’t forget. I’m new with this thing.” He held up the weapon. “It could go off any second.”

Michael cocked the pistol. “Tell you something else. I’ll bet the bullets in here can make a mess of you just as bad as that …”

“Thump gun,” Ophelia said.

“Seriously?” Michael chirped. “Stupid name. And besides, I killed a guy, too. So, yeah. Wonder Woman here, she took out at least a couple dudes. Yeah. So, we’re all killers here, right? Just saying.”

Jamie heard Michael’s panic. “We’re good, Coop. We’re good. The quake is over. We’ll make it.” He offered a thumbs up.

Sammie told Michael she could walk on her own now, but she held her right arm limp against her side.

“Give me your pistol, J,” she told Jamie, flexing her firing hand. “We need to be ready.”

“Are you sure?” He asked. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’ll be fine.” Sammie grabbed the weapon and motioned it toward Ophelia. “She knows she’s in trouble if anything happens to us. She’s our best bet, right now.”

Jamie rubbed her injured shoulder. He did not experience the loss of energy like before, when he healed his friends’ mortal injuries, but he realized the Jewel would not deny him this gift.

They approached to ten meters of a huge, double-sided metallic door that reminded Jamie of bank vaults in heist movies.

“Can you open that from inside?”

“The panel is to the immediate left,” Ophelia said.

“And your people on the other side?”

“Defending the perimeter. If the shield beacons held during the quake, we have a parabolic grid extending one hundred meters. We recover our team and board our ship.”

“Easy enough.” Jamie stopped her from reaching the panel. “Too easy. Who knows we’re here?” He tapped his temple to remind Ophelia of her holographic transmission.

“My team outside, plus a handful of others, all trustworthy.”

“And who are the ones who want me dead?”

“Mercenaries for other Chancellors.”

“The Jewel told me something about an opposition and why the observers hid me. The United Green. Is it them?”

“In part. The Green is hardly united anymore. Chancellors have many agendas these days, James. Whatever the Jewel told you, it cannot know about the past fifteen years. This is a far more dangerous world than the one you were born into.”

“That’s what I figured.” Jamie shifted to Michael. “Coop, are you sure about this? You can still go back.”

“Alone? Dude. Seriously. Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because you got family that loves you. And this world? I shouldn’t have let you come.”

He shrugged, but Jamie sensed the conflict.

“Tough shit, J. I’m here. I ain’t going back, no matter what. Besides, I still got to come up with a new catchphrase, and I need to see all the cool future-y crap