The Omega Device (The Ha-Shan Chronicles Book 1) (39 page)

Only one possible course of action lay ahead, but it might be too slow-going; manually deciphering the screen's text. Although it might not make sense without further context, he had to try. Otherwise, it meant directly accessing the weapon's interface, and possibly—inadvertently—triggering the weapon.

An alert dinged in his headphones. A small window opened in the corner of a monitor, displayed a notification: “
SAT-LINK ESTABLISHED: OMEGA DATA TRANSMITTING.”
His fingers sprinted and Black's disturbing, modulated voice frittered a cold over his skin.

“I want answers,” Black ordered in harmonic discordance.

“Thorne's deciphering the device, sir,” West replied.

“You've said that,” Black responded. Irritation seeped through the shifting frequencies. “We're growing impatient. The rebels have taken Misrata. Kohms is in the pathway to Tripoli.”

“ETA and force?”

“It does not matter.” The modulator fluctuated into a low, rumbling growl. “We want that weapon operational
before
they reach the city. We are not interested in their conflict.
If
you fail, we will send the response team to deal with you.”

“You mean eliminate us, Sir?”

Thorne savored West's fear.

“Yes.”

“Sir, I—”

“There will be no further excuses,” Black interrupted. “The weapon
will
be operational in twenty four hours or your contract expires.”

“Understood, sir,” West replied.

The screen flashed: “
SAT-LINK TERMINATED: EXTERNAL DISCONNECTION.
”
Thorne watched West storm from his tent on the security cameras. He began shouting orders, “I want this place searched top to bottom, now! Thorne's got twenty-four hours.”

“Yes, sir,” a man said. “And when he's finished?”

“Kill him,” West instructed. “I'll deal with the others then.”

Thorne fumed. His fingers doubled their sprint. The room ignored him. He had twenty four hours before West killed them all. Choice-less, he ran searches through the satellite up-links that connected him to Omega's databases across the world. He remote-hacked a network reserved for emergency communications at a foreign embassy in Misrata, began sending packets to a Parliamentary building.

The minute, digital scraps, slowly deposited themselves across the Parliament's network, opened, and expanded over its nodes to fill their screens. Thorne breathed deep, read his message several times.

Arabic text was translated to English below; “
Rebels of Misrata, infidels invade the land of your ancestors. Within the ruins of Leptis Magna, beneath Kohms, you will find them. Destroy them.
”

35.

Hope

October 9
th
 

12:00 PM

The Omega Device

Reese's chest heaved, her lungs wheezed, but her body was otherwise stilled by devastation. Maggie sat beside her, silent. The chamber was a quiet din in the wake of Reese's forced revelation. Russell stood at the edge of the cage, hands on the bars, to watch Omega's patrols.

An unfathomable atavism bubbled in his chest, infected him with fury. Maggie had told him what West had done. Hitting Maggie had pushed him over the edge, but emotionally eviscerating Reese filled him with a hatred he could no longer measure.

Rage permeated his every breath. He watched West, planned every move of a thousand different attacks. If he could reach him, West's life would end. The cage served kept him in check, but slowly fueled his blood-lust. Maggie sensed the perversion of his collected, logical nature.

Thorne peered between monitors then rose for the cage. A guard stopped him, “Get back to work!”

“I'm compiling code, it'll take time. I just want to talk to them.”

“Get to work or the L-T to will
put
you to work!”
 

“Listen monkey man,” Thorne spat, consumed with frustration. “West's gone to sleep. You want to wake him, be my guest, but
I'm talking to them
.”

The guard's eyes narrowed. He planted a fist in Thorne's gut, “Five minutes.”

Thorne limped away, doubled over, “Yeah, thanks. Asshole.”

He approached with deep breaths. Maggie rose, “You alright?”

He fought back a cough, “Black's putting the strangle on West. We've got less than a day before he sends in the cleaners.”

“The what?”

“Specialists,” Reese spoke at last, her eyes fixed on a distant point. “Murderers. Come in, clean up. Slaughter.”

Maggie looked back to Thorne as he leaned in, “I think I've figured it out. I've decoded some more passages. They explain, well, a lot.” He continued, his voice a shaky whisper, “It's the columns and the section above ground hidden by the piers.”

“What is?”

He kept his voice low, “I'm running a scan to double-check, but I think the control panel just activates the columns. I don't think it'll trigger the weapon, but it
could
buy us time.”

“Don't do it,” she pled, thinking of the cost.

“
I don't have a choice
, Maggie,” he said, terrified less for himself than them. “I
can't
stall any longer.”

“There
has to be
another way.”

He shook his head, “The language is too complex. I can't learn more than I have otherwise. All we know right now is that this is the control panel. It might even be that there's more—”

“Thorne—”

He begged forgiveness, “I
have
to. He's going to
kill you
.”
 

“This machine was built with the sole purpose of exterminating us. It's been hidden for
a
reason
.
”

“You can't know what it'll do.”

“You heard the message.”

“She said it
is
the weapon. It doesn't mean there isn't more—”
 

“Time's up fuck-wad, back to work!” The guard called.

“Don't do it, Thorne!” Maggie pled, verging on tears.

“I have to, Maggie. Please—” The guard pulled him away from the cage.

“Thorne!” The guard tossed him back toward the dais. “Damn it!”

She turned from the bars, sank back beside Reese. Russell's trance shifted to the guard with a possessed glare. The guard examined it with a curiously tilted head.

“So this is how it ends?” Reese breathed. “Stuck in a cage. While the weapon's deployed. At least we'll. Kill that son of a bitch.”

“Maybe Thorne's right.”

Reese faintly shook her head, “What's it matter? Once the weapon's active. None of us is any use. We're all going to die. In this cage.”

Maggie's confidence waned, “Thorne'll figure it out.”

Reese accepted her fate with a sharp breath, “I've done. A lot of bad things in my life. What I did to my family was. Hardly the worst. They never really did anything wrong they were just. Stupid. Like Thorne. He didn't hurt anyone. Didn't. Deserve any of this. I did.”

“You,” Maggie hesitated, confused. “You feel guilty?”

She exhaled a sharp breath, “Guilt was never the question.”

The conversation ended there. Maggie was stunned by Reese's words. She felt guilt, always had. Her unpredictable hostility was not the cause of her issues but the result of it.

Despite the obvious cold-blooded murders, she'd been fueled by pain. West and Omega would have them believe she was always twisted, sick, but her actions were a defense against external trauma. Omega used that to billow guilt into a raging self-hatred that fueled her dark side, caused more self-inflicted pain.

They, along with West, had manipulated her into becoming a monster, not simply leashed one. Her guilt had resurfaced when faced with Maggie, drove her to risk her own life to protect her. She was Reese's
only
route to redemption.

Unfortunately, they might not live long enough for her to pursue it.

36.

Rising

October 9
th
 

12:45 PM

The Omega Device

“Get West!” Thorne shouted. “Get him now!”

Maggie hung her head, defeated. She'd watched Thorne from the cage, helpless to intervene. She wanted him to listen, silently begged him to, but he'd learned all he could at this stage and saw no further path to stalling.

With his natural, technological curiosity, he couldn't help but try to learn more, hope he could stall in the meantime. He was compelled by curious fear to interact with the device. Even if he was somehow right, and they did survive, it was only a matter of time before Omega attempted to tamper with the weapon.

Maggie's forehead pressed against the cage's bars, her face blank. West rushed to Thorne with a group of men in tow. They stopped at the dais' edge as West ascended it.

The room fell into absolute silence, and Thorne explained for all to hear, “I can only read so much right now, but I know this: The columns lead up into the Arch's piers and draw heat and power from the stone, sun, and the Earth's magnetic field.”

He paused, cast a glance toward the cage. West fidgeted.

He continued, “Activating this console will power the room and bring up the weapon's primary interface. It'll take a while to decipher, but from there we're in business. In the mean-time, you can tell your boss you're moving ahead.”

West sneered, deduced Thorne had eavesdropped on his comm, “Do it.”

Maggie's head rose slowly beside Russell, his eyes locked on West. Thorne instructed the soldiers at the edge of the dais, “Get the gear out of the way. The columns are the power source, if something activates it's going to come from them.”

West shouted orders and the nearby group dispersed. Dozens of bodies all worked at-once to lift tables and gear, move them from between the columns. An alarm sounded on a computer-bank, but went ignored.

With the area cleared, Thorne stepped to console, looked down on it. “They have to be activated in pairs.”

“Just turn the fucking thing on,” West commanded.

Thorne cast West a glance, looked back at the console to hide a snarl, “Whatever you say.”

He depressed the first pair of large switches. A loud hum ignited. It revved through-out the cavernous room, reverberated off stone walls to settle at a low frequency. Thorne glanced at West again. His eyes narrowed with a deep breath.

The final switches depressed to another ignition. The collective hum apexed to a mid-range oscillation. The room shook. Sections of floor slid away between the four columns. Stone conduits rose, ground upward along the columns to bridge the distances between them. The rumble stopped with the conduits at-rest mid way up the room. The humming intensified subtly, and the random, white striations of stone began to glow.

“What the hell?” Maggie breathed.

The subtle rise of sound climaxed in a wavering buzz of frequencies. The dull striations flared. Thunder cracked. An intense light burst through the room. It blinded Maggie, forced her to shield her eyes. The light retreated to reveal the bridging conduits and columns glowing white-hot.

The glow streamed a syrupy current along the striations, a power-flow visible with its loud oscillations. Light streamed into the columns, rose upward through the ceiling to the piers. A second crack, and a flash arced between the columns and above the dais. It bubbled out, descended around it to trap Thorne and West.

Thorne smiled deviously. West clenched a fist, spit through his teeth, “
What is this?”
 

“I have a
really
bad feeling about this,” Maggie whispered.

Reese crawled to the bars. Maggie helped her up. A cylindrical stone began to rise behind Thorne and West, slowly, silently. The console's screen sprinted through lines of Cuneiform.

“Thorne, what the
fuck'
s going on?” West demanded.

“You wanted it on!” His devious smile widened.

“Uh sir,” one of West's men called beyond the barrier. He touched the field. His arm jerked backward.

“
Thorne!
What the
fuck
is this thing?” West barked, stepping toward the field.

Thorne's eyes hardened, “It's a magnetically-repulsive shield meant to contain dense matter.

“What the hell's—”

“You're stuck, asshole!” Thorne spat with satisfied hatred.

Russell watched the rising cylinder, “Maggie?”

West growled, whipped sideways, caught sight of the cylinder. It locked into place at the rear of the dais, half and again his height and slotted in-front. He examined it. A distant explosion shook the cavern.

He growled, “Alpha and Bravo teams move!”

The room gave a quivering tremble. West's radio clicked over, “L-T. Contacts!”

Gunfire blared over the radio, crackled in bursts beyond the chamber. West looked over the edge of the dais, through the console's display, “What the hell's going on out there? I want a report, now!”

“The rebels are here,” a voice radioed. Thorne remained fixed, his plans coming to fruition. “They're in force. Heavy weapons and vehicles. A whole goddamned pla—”

The radio went dead. West turned for his men. The cylinder's face slid away, released foggy air.

“Hold the tunnel!” West ordered.

Russell recognized a clever, deliberate maneuvering to Thorne's actions. There had been more to his earlier assertions than they'd expected. Thorne knew what was happening, what
would
happen. He'd tried to show Maggie he knew more than he let on, but didn't know how to.

Maggie's heart began to race as something stirred within the foggy cylinder. Heavy feet echoed in her head. The room emptied of all but a few technicians and the cage-guard. Thorne waited. Something clawed the fog; a webbed hand gripped the cylinder's open-edge.

Maggie blinked.

Thorne slammed all his weight into West. He was caught off-guard, hit the barrier. He rebounded to the next, hit at an angle, and launched at the floor. He lie unconscious as Thorne grabbed up his pistol, trained it on him. The cage-guard rushed forward, his rifle raised. Shapes stirred through the fog.