Blood Brothers

Michael Evans

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Newsletter

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

The Story Continues...

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Blood Brothers (Conspiracy Chronicles)

Copyright © 2019 by Michael Evans

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

For updates from the author on his mission to live boundlessly and a free download of the Deadwave Official Game Guide subscribe to the author’s newsletter at: www.mevansinked.com/team-boundless/

To Matthew Evans, my one true blood brother, who always makes me smile.

Chapter 1

The blackness of the night sky has no answers.

Nothing does.

For the first time in my life, I feel like a failure, even though by all objective measures I succeeded. I should be happy. I should feel fulfilled. I should feel like I’m good enough for once in my life. I won the Deadwave World Championship. I achieved my only dream with tens of thousands of people watching me and cheering me on as I sliced apart zombies and eliminated other avatars in the biggest game of my life.

I gave up everything to be able to do this myself.

I skipped school, pretty much lost the meaning of sleep in my life, and did not interact with any human beings outside of Deadwave players. That meant I had to miss out on all the normal high school things: prom, homecoming, dating drama, sports games. That also meant I had to miss out on the last few years of my mom’s life before she supposedly killed herself by throwing herself off the sunset cliffs at Point Loma late one night.

I only say supposedly because I have a sneaking suspicion that she was murdered by the same mysterious group trying to kill me and forcing me to assassinate my father, but I’ll get back to that later. The point is I gave up everything for the chance to win.

And I told myself once I got to hold that diamond medallion in my hand that it would be worth it. That the unbelievable feeling of victory, of happiness, would outweigh the sorrow and hatred for my own self and allow me to finally feel truly great about something in life.

I was wrong.

I got that medal. I felt the feeling of victory, and don’t get me wrong, it was un-freaking-believable—I’m talking like combining all the best highs in the world into one out-of-body, mind-shattering experience.

But the high faded in less than a minute, and soon reality hit me.

I stood on that stage tonight and realized the one simple truth: nothing outside of me will make me truly happy. And that realization is one that would normally be empowering, but after learning that you pretty much pointlessly sacrificed five years of your life to ultimately fail in pursuit of your one goal—happiness—is beyond a depressing feeling. In fact, it’s the kind of feeling that makes you want to close your eyes and force your body to sleep.

But I can’t do that.

The terrors will come the second my consciousness enters the state of sleep. As I think about sleeping, my mind instantly flashes back to all the kidnappings, all the gruesome killings I had to witness, and a fat man choking me, which, when put together into one nightmarish vision, makes for a truly horrible night’s sleep.

I have people after me. Actually, to put it more bluntly, I have people who want to kill me. They want to destroy my father’s empire. They want to steal his patents, likely steal his money, and ensure the world-changing technology of the Chimera Life Pods, which will allow anyone to live in a virtual world, is in their own hands.

And now I have to kill him. I have to murder him, so that those same people don’t murder me.

And that time could be at any moment. It’s the reason my heart can’t stop pounding against my chest, and my eyes perpetually scan my surroundings for any figures lurking in the darkness. I didn’t feel safe going anywhere after the competition other than to my hotel room. Luckily, it is only a few blocks away from Madison Square Garden, so it was very easy for me to hail one of the yellow taxis in the fleet of city-owned self-driving vehicles that roam the streets.

I decided to skip the post-game conference, instead escaping out one of the side entrances of the Garden, where a taxi discreetly picked me up and whisked me away from the chaos. With my piercing headache, and the sudden defeated feeling overcoming me after working tirelessly for years, I knew it would be best if I could sit in the darkness of my twentieth-story hotel room.

So, that’s where I am. In fact, not to get into too much detail, but I’m currently in my boxers and socks, sitting on a leather chair in the corner of the cramped hotel room, letting the soothing energy of the silence and darkness amalgamating into one sound soothe my mind and drain the adrenaline out of me. It will likely be at least another hour before my mind can finally shut itself off and enter a state of sleep, but for now, staring straight forward at the white comforter, the mattress, and the odd patterns in the brown carpet beneath me is all I need to keep me content. I am sitting completely still, except for the odd, yet compulsive desire for me to rub my socks against the floor in tight, continuous circles.

This trance of sorts, where my thoughts stay locked in trying to bring back the high of that feeling the first few moments after I won and return the tears of joy to my eyes, shatters with a single, loud knock on my door.

I scramble for my clothes. On the floor I dump out the contents of my suitcase, including my two sets of extra clothes, my toiletries, and my clear glass tablet that I sometimes use to get work done on instead of on my hologlasses. I throw on a pair of cargo shorts and a gray hoodie, the two staples of my wardrobe.

I step towards the door, then pivot backwards, my nerves getting the best of me. I turn towards the window and try to think about ways I can survive the jump. In my mind I have this crazy fantasy that I can always avoid confronting the issue—avoid killing my father—if I don’t ever give them a chance to give me a sign. I can always lock myself in a single room in my house, and whenever I step out in public, I will make sure I’m around dozens of people, so that they can’t get away with anything without being caught.

I should have known from the beginning that plan is a pipe dream. I gulp as the loud knock reverberates throughout the room once again, breaking the silence in an instant. It has to be them. My dad would text me if he were coming over. And Riva, well, I highly doubt she will want to talk to me anytime soon. There is only one reason why someone is knocking on my door this late. They want me to kill.

My options of escaping from this room are infinitely slim. I can maybe reach the air duct at the corner of my room and crawl through the air vents. But at some point, I’m bound to hit a deadly fall twenty stories down, and I don’t know how many people have died from falling in air conditioning vents, but I don’t want to add my name to that list.

Of course, my second option is to try and bolt out the window, but there’s no way that will work. For one, I’m not a freaking superhero. So, scaling the building is not an option. The only thing my body will know how to do is fall from it. And falling to the cement on a chilly October night is not how I want my story to end.

I’ll go down fighting.

I look through the peephole. My only hope is that it’s not that freakish masked lady from before.

“Open the door, it’s me.” The voice causes me to jump back as my right eye nears the peephole. I bite my tongue to refrain from screaming—to say I’m paranoid nowadays is an understatement.

The distinctly strong, feminine voice instantly clicks in my memory. I open the door, suddenly feeling more stupid and embarrassed than scared. Well, part of me still feels scared too, but more of a nervous scared instead of a I-might-die fear.

This is the girl I thought would never give me the time of day. This is the girl that I never thought and still don’t think that I deserve. She’s beautiful. She’s smart. She’s athletic. She’s caring. She’s everything I’m not and more.

Normally I would be elated to see her. Normally I would open the door and see her huge smile as our eyes connect and soon after our lips too.

But I know today will be different.

Her lifelong dream was lost today. She wanted to win the Deadwave World Championship like me. And she sacrificed so much the week before the competition as I battled a drug-induced coma to make sure that I could compete, that I can’t even imagine what she felt when she watched me drop that medallion onto the ground. When she watched me drop her dream onto the floor as if it was nothing.

To me, it all now feels like nothing. And I wanted the world to know that. I wanted the world to know that none of this matters, that all of this is bullshit and a distraction from the real problems threatening to tear society apart.

But I don’t know if Riva gets that.

And the moment I open the door, I want to close my eyes. I can’t bear to see her upset. I can’t witness the fact that I have disappointed someone else who I care about too.

I barely have any time to register the expression on her face before her body springs forward. She wraps her arms around me. The familiar warmth of her body and comforting aroma of her hair swathe my senses as all my worries wash away.

She whispers into my ears, her hot breath pressing against my neck. “I’m proud of you.”

Chapter 2

I wasn’t kidding when I said I sacrificed most of my life and suffered a metric crap ton of guilt to pursue my Deadwave dream. That’s why as I lay in the hotel room bed with her, I have next to no clue what I’m doing. And mind you, I know this isn’t complicated. I just have to put my arm around her and let our bodies and the moment take care of the rest. But that’s exactly what is nearly impossible for my mind.

I can’t stop thinking about the best place to put my arm around her, or the right position for my body (there has to be a technique for spooning right?). Stop thinking, just let it happen.

For once, I let my mind get swept away in the moment, in the beauty of her curvy body and her thick, black hair. I don’t know how these kinds of things are supposed to feel, or even if they are supposed to have a singular feeling, but the voice in my head constantly telling myself that it wants more suddenly silences.

Seeing the pleasure on her face and feeling the exuberance in her body makes me feel like I’m good enough for as long as the feeling lasts. Her heavy breaths only cause more blood to rush down south. We let our bodies awkwardly dance throughout the night, our lips and bodies doing all the talking instead of our minds, and all the problems in our lives becoming a thing of the past as we both drown in pleasure.

But the moment ends way before I am ready. The second she pulls away, her body sinking back down into the mattress beneath her, my mind falls back into its familiar pattern—it wants more. But I know well enough by now to hold myself back. Some parts of my mind will never be satisfied, and in life I’m still dealing with the realization that I will never be truly happy. Whatever I have in life, I will always want more of it.

There is never a limit.

The moments when my mind seems to forget that thought and is satisfied in a fading feeling are the ones that bring me solemn happiness. And despite everything in life right now, despite the fact that everything is falling apart, and I have no idea how to fix it, I just feel happy.

And those moments in my life are few and far between.

I never allow myself to feel that way.

“Well, wow.” She smiles as she looks up at me. I am still above her, my bare body suddenly feeling chilly as the vent pumps out a round of cold air. I fumble for my shirt, the self-conscious feeling over my large nipples and lack of defined muscles taking hold as the high of the moment fades.

She pulls the blanket over her chest, an odd glow in her brown eyes. The darkness in the room that made it nearly impossible to discern the color of wallpaper feels alive with her here. Everything feels better with her. Part of me wishes we could somehow run off and have a future together, but I know that is impossible for too many reasons. My future may not exist. And even if it does, everything will be different.

We only have this moment.

“Yeah, we sure didn’t waste any time there.” I laugh and kiss her on her cheek.

“I needed that.” She speaks in a soft, sexy tone that reaches out and touches every part of my body. “I needed you.”

“I did too. I do.”

“I’m sorry for stopping by this late, I know you’re probably tired and have a lot going through your mind right now, but I needed to see you. I’m also not some creep who followed you home. I messaged your dad and got the address of your hotel room.”

“Oh, please, you are welcome to follow me home any day. I’d much rather you than them, and you are the best surprise in the world.” I smile, this time kissing her on her neck. She turns over so that she can look into my eyes, her body still remaining under the covers. “Opening the door to a hug from you is amazing, I didn’t think you would want to see me after everything.”

“We were competitors when we walked out of that room.” Tears surface in her eyes, but her voice remains calm. “I wanted us both to win. But I know that is impossible. So, since it wasn’t me, I’m glad it was you. I wanted it for you more than anyone else. I’ll be back at it again next year, and it sucks to feel like this whole year was wasted, but I’m happy you got it. This was your only chance and you did it.”

“I’m still sorry, though.” I embrace her, and the moment my arms wrap around her body, she weeps quietly into my shoulders. “I’m so, so sorry. You sacrificed most of your last week of training before the finals to help me get better and to support my dad. We literally have no family or friends—literally none.” I pause, the thought hitting me about how lonely my past has been. After my mom’s death, what little interaction we had with her family on the East Coast disappeared, and my dad mentioned his parents so little that at times I question if they actually exist and if maybe he is a literal robot (I didn’t actually believe my father was a robot as a kid, but I won’t lie—the thought has crossed my mind). All I had was Jake and my mom, while my dad worked. Now, with Jake siding against me and throwing a party that led to my old house collapsing, all I have is Riva.

And I’m afraid I’m going to lose her too.

“Just thank you.” My voice finally breaks through the silence. “Thank you for being there for me and for my dad when no one else could. You sacrificed so much.” I sit up and push the covers off me.

“What are you doing?” She eyes me suspiciously as I make my way over to the small dresser. I pick up the glowing diamond medallion draped across it. A sea of event staff flooded me immediately as I walked backstage after dropping it in front of an audience of tens of thousands of people. They handed it to me, most shocked by my action, and I took it, forcing my way out of the Garden as fast as I could. The entire time I kept it in my pocket, my fingers grazing over the smooth crystals every few seconds. Even as I pick it up now, it is so dense yet so beautiful that I can’t help but stop for a second and admire it.

“Do you know why I dropped this?” I hold it up, its exterior barely shimmering in the blackness. She sits up, the covers falling to her waist to reveal her naked breasts.

“No.” She shakes her head. She looks frustrated, even maddened. Her eyes can barely even look at the medallion; instead she glances out the window and the faint rays of city lights that peek through the closed shades.

“This feeling. This goal. This dream that we both sacrificed so much for. I realized how pointless it all was.” I swallow. “This didn’t change anything in my life. This doesn’t make me happy. It’s a reminder that I’m not. A reminder that nothing will magically make my life better. Looking at this diamond medallion and realizing there is no seismic shift in my life makes me want more. It makes me want all the power in the world. But at the same time, I wanna give up. I wanna stop chasing things. Stop chasing happiness, and live in this moment, forever with you.” I pause, carefully examining her expression as I walk over to the bed with the medallion in my hand.

“That’s why I want to give this to you. You deserve this just as much as I do. And I know better than anyone that this medallion is no substitute for victory, but it’s a symbol. That maybe the diamond is worthless to me, maybe the money is, maybe even victory itself means nothing. I’m still trying to figure it out. But I know this: you mean something to me. You mean a lot to me. And I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future, but I want you to have this as a reminder that I’m always here for you. And that in the moments we aren’t together, I wish it were different.”

I raise the medallion up and push the strands of hair on her chest behind her neck. Then I place the medallion around her head, the sterling silver falling on her dark skin beautifully as the medallion itself hangs right in her cleavage. Her eyes fixate on the medallion, her body unmoving as I continue to stare at her, trying to hold myself back from her lips.

This is by far the most beautiful moment in my entire life. Never did I ever imagine I would be in this position, where both my mind, heart, and balls are exploding with anticipation.

She opens her mouth as if to speak, and I hold her hands in mine, my thumbs caressing the back of her hand in smooth circles. She finally looks up from the medallion, the shock seeming to slowly settle in. I expected to see her happy. I want to see her smile, the familiar sparkle in her eyes that makes my heart skip a beat.

I want to feel her arms around me, and her lips connect with mine.

But for some reason these moments never go how I picture them. Hell, life never goes how I picture it—the world always finds a new creative way to put an obstacle in the road. She cries. From the way by which her body vibrates, and her eyes close with pain, the fact that these aren’t tears of joy becomes evident.

I wrap my arms around her, not knowing what to say or even if I should say anything.

“I’m sorry,” she finally utters, her words barely audible between tears. “Sam. Thank you so much. But I can’t accept this. I can’t. I don’t need this medal to remind me of your place in my heart. You deserved it, you earned this. But none of this is what’s making me sad. I can’t even think about any of this right now.”

“What’s wrong?” I place a hand on her cheek, wiping the tears that continue to stream out of her eyes. I am such an idiot. Why do I always have to think about myself? Why I am always worried about how I feel about things when I should be worried about her?

“I can’t even believe it.” Her body shakes with emotion as she leans on me. I let both our bodies fall onto the bed, the pillows and blankets beneath us providing solace. “My dad, he’s in the hospital. He’s in really bad shape. He’s dying.”

As the words leave her mouth, all the sadness inside her releases in a single instant. I wrap my arms around her, trying to let the warmth of my body lessen the devastation as the aftershock of the news overcomes every part of her mind. A new heaviness resides in the air of the room as my mind ventures back into the worst moment of my life—the moment I stood on the edge of that cliff and realized my mother was dead.

“Riva, I am so sorry.” I squeeze her hand as tightly as I can, keeping my other arm around her.

“Don’t say that you’re sorry.” Her tone turns bitter. “People only say sorry when they can’t do anything about it. I’m sorry too. I’m so sorry that I can’t help him. Damn, I couldn’t even get a flight back to California until the morning. But I don’t want to be reminded of that.”

“I can help. I promise. We can get through this together. He will get better; we have to believe. He can maybe even go into a Life Pod.”

“I really hope something works, but I don’t know, Sam. In moments like these, it’s so hard to stay hopeful, even though I know I need to. He had a heart attack, a major one. And I hate how he has to go through this pain. He had it right before the Deadwave tournament went live. He always would watch the tournaments I competed in.” She looks up at the dark ceiling. “And he had it right before the finals started. He never will be able to see it. And I’m afraid that he will never be able to see me play again. That I will never be able to tell him how much I love him again.”

She sighs, the tension in her body deflating for the moment. I want to hold her forever. I want to lie here, our breaths in perfect harmony as we let the darkness turn to light and then the light turn back to darkness again.

Two loud pounding noises against the door interrupt before I can respond. They aren’t the frantic, forceful sounds of Riva before. The echoes have a distinct, foreboding character.

I shoot up in bed, my mind instantly amok with anxiety. I fumble for my undergarments and shorts, trying to maintain as much of my dignity as possible before it is all possibly stripped away from me.

“Who is that?” Riva stares at the door, unmoving.

I don’t respond. I don’t have it in me to say who I think it is—who I know it is. So I look at her as I slip on my shoes, trying to take in her gorgeous figure for what may be one last time. I don’t want to wait any longer until the person at the door either barges in or finds a different way to break in. I can’t have Riva be in danger. After all, if these people know that I am with her, they will kill her. They already tried to late that night in the middle of Lake Michigan.

“You can sleep here and wait for me until I get back,” I say as she starts to get up and try and stop me from answering the door. “I have to do this.”

“What the hell are you doing?” My words have the exact opposite effect that I want them to. She tugs me on my arm, her unclothed body seriously tempting me to climb back into bed with her.

“I’m ending this for good.” I pull my arm away from her. She nods, her body paralyzed with fear. She doesn’t try and hold me back as I walk to the door. She knows what these people are capable of. She knows I can’t stop them—that they can’t see us together or else they will kill her. “Hide under the covers. I promise you will be safe.”

I look out the peep hole. And there they are. The security guard stationed outside my room has disappeared, and in his place my living nightmare stands. Well, I assume it is them. I actually have no clue who the secret organization trying to kill me is except that my dad is a member of them (I know, ironic), or what any of their members look like except Lez Mooney (he’s an uber wealthy media conglomerate from Britain whom I had the pleasure of meeting and being choked by after being bailed out of jail for a crime I didn’t commit). In the hallway stand three tall, husky figures. They all have on black jumpsuits and are wearing masks over their entire heads that make them look like a mutant cross between a troll and lion.

I open the door, and the hot air in the hallway still doesn’t stop goose bumps from lining my body. This time they don’t drug me or knock me out with a toxic gas as they normally do.

Instead they wait for me to shut the door behind me and greet me with a warm handshake.

I don’t need them to tell me why they are here.

It is time for me to kill my father.

Chapter 3

The harsh gusts of wind force my blonde hair over my eyes. Two large men stand on either side of me, their hands directing my movements to the helicopter in front of us.

I have tried to get them to tell me what the hell is going on and what I am doing for the last five minutes, to no avail. My dad is staying in the same hotel as me, I am confident in that. I even tried to help them locate his whereabouts by telling them his exact room number, which is a few doors down from mine on the same hall.

The masked men were not intent on listening. In fact, they stayed silent the entire time as they pushed me up the concrete staircase all thirty floors up to the roof. They are on a mission, and I suppose I am too now that I am being dragged along.

Except this isn’t the mission I prepared for. And the entire time as I walk up the steps, the musty, cold air making its way into my lungs, I ponder whether this could be a good thing or not. What if they think it’s easier to get rid of me?

I shudder as I glance at the city skyline silhouetted against the night sky. On all sides, spiraling glass skyscrapers pierce the clouds above, their metal spires and flashing lights on top acting as a beacon of hope for a world that has none left. Over the years, Manhattan has been transformed into a playground for the ultra-wealthy, and now they are practically all that’s left. In the distance, a number of massive residential skyscrapers that billionaires sleep in among the clouds glow brightly as the rest of the population—all the people whose jobs were taken away—are left to suffer on the outer boroughs.

The red helicopter grows closer with each step. The fear that they are going to throw me off the building and let my body plummet to the cement sidewalk below lessens as the doors to the helicopter open up. Looks like it’s time for an adventure. I grind my teeth together, analyzing the rooftop. A large greenhouse takes up most of the space, with exotic flora and brightly colored flowers visible from the outside.

It embodies everything that these people aren’t: it’s fragile, innovative, and priceless, especially at a time when the world is beginning to suffocate underneath the increasing tons of carbon in the air. Our ancestors have created the perfect disaster for us to try and clean up in the twenty-first century. The industrial revolution created a bunch of useless shit poisoning all of our natural resources and a bunch of potent greenhouse gases hell-bent on altering the climate on which agriculture and all aquatic and terrestrial life depend on (so like, yeah, it’s kind of a problem). Of course, since we are so great at creating even more issues, we decided that it would be better to create even more wealth for the wealthy and give even more useless shit to the poor. So now in exchange for useless cat videos and odd advertisements taking up our brainwaves (that’s at least how they want it to be), the information revolution has led to the rise of big data, which further concentrates wealth and has led to artificial intelligence replacing even the most skilled forms of labor such as neurosurgery.

We did such a great job. Well, no, not me specifically. Just the world. And now what may be the only solution is escaping from it into a virtual world. It’s my dad’s plan to change the world forever. It’s my dad’s plan for the technology his company, Chimera, has been researching for over a decade: Life Pods. And now he is going to be killed over it.

But this is just the beginning. As I look at this city and feel the energy of the iconic skyline surrounding me, I can’t help but feel that this is the beginning of the end.

Everything is about to collapse.

And instead of helping to fix the problem, I have to kill one of the most powerful men hell-bent on solving it. Maybe it’s hitting me now, but I am really an awful person. Like what I’m being forced to do doesn’t just affect me—this changes everything.

I could singlehandedly be fucking this world even more.

I can still jump off now. It won’t be too hard to shake the men off me for a second to break free and leap off the building. But I’m no savior. I’m too selfish to end it like that. I’m too ambitious. Part of me wants to take my dad’s place.

Part of me wants to be the sole man responsible for saving this world.

You don’t need to tell me that it’s all probably a pipe dream, but it’s what I believe. And I can’t let myself die. I can’t let these people kill me.

So, I do as they say.

Which in this moment means climbing up the steps of the helicopter and entering its brightly lit confines. The door shuts behind me, and the two masked men who had escorted me to the helicopter step further inside, leaving their coworker (or fellow kidnapper and overall crappy person) outside my hotel room.

He better leave Riva alone. I blink, motioning with my hand to try and call Riva. My instincts fail me this time. Of course—I left my hologlasses back in my hotel room. Objects like that are only a distraction during an intimate moment. In a time like this, they are essential.

The lights slowly dim as they force me to sit down in a leather chair at the front of the helicopter. Given that this mysterious group of rich bastards never seem to be frugal about their own spending, the helicopter itself is by far the nicest I have ever seen. The leather chairs themselves are laced in gold, and the interior of the helicopter has four seats, and a massive tablet at the back that has all the controls for the helicopter, including the temperature, flight path, fuel, speed, among dozens of other settings that I don’t have time to ponder.

One of the men moves to the back of the helicopter, and I watch closely as he taps a few times on the screen, zooming in on a specific building in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

After pleading with them at least a dozen times to tell me what the hell is going on, I have learned my lesson by now to not ask questions and let it all happen. Then, the masked figure next to me pulls out a long, serrated knife, making sure to hold it right in front of my eyes so that I can get a good look.

I’ll be a good boy, I promise. I stare straight forward, not wanting to make any movements to test the man and see if he will try and hack one of my limbs off with its deadly edges. The other masked figure, whose bodysuit blends in with the blackness of the night and interior of the helicopter, approaches on the other side of me. Instead of whipping out a deadly knife, he sits right next to me.

Chills run down my spine as I feel the presence of his body inches away from mine. I don’t need to see his face to imagine how unnerving it is. He probably has fangs for teeth, pits for eyes, and large nostrils with hair protruding out from them in long, booger-filled strands.

Or maybe he is a normal guy. Maybe he has a family at home, and he is working for this horrible group to try and make ends meet. That thought is a bit more sobering than thinking about him as a despicable killer. It actually makes me respect them both a bit, if that is truly why they are doing this. Monsters do truly exist in this world. No one needs to convince me of that. But sometimes a bad situation can turn good people into monsters too.

Hell, I am a monster myself. I am a killer.

On the short helicopter ride to the selected building, the entire skyline of the city whizzes by at new fantastical viewing angles with every second. For a few seconds, the new mega-skyscrapers on Billionaire’s Row illuminate the night sky, while in the next view the sprawling expanse of Central Park can be seen below. Far off in the distance, the older skyscrapers in Midtown and even Wall Street glow in the night. Unlike most cities in the United States, the lights in this city are still abundant, and the abandoned, deteriorating buildings that plague the skylines of Chicago and San Francisco are nonexistent here.

For a moment my mind loses itself in the web of streets and concrete jungle below. I can stay in this state for hours, maybe even for eternity, knowing what is about to come. There is something about this city that causes someone to have to glance at the same place for hours to fully appreciate all its nuances.

I don’t have hours, though. I don’t have any time at all.

The landing gear of the helicopter collides with the concrete of the helicopter pad in a dull thud. The reverberation of the helicopter sends shockwaves through my body as the lights in the helicopter turn back on and the blades halt to a stop. I won’t let them kill me.

One last determined thought passes through my mind as I stand up. I swallow, stifling a nervous sigh. The helicopter doors slide open, and I suppress the doubt and fear inside me, letting the anger and hatred boil to the surface of my mind. If I can focus on those two emotions, I can get out of this.

Another man stands at the edge of the helicopter pad, a tight-lipped smile on his face. His wispy gray hair sways in the wind as he reaches into his waistband, which has an entire arsenal of weapons and grenades strapped to it. It is too late for me to get out of this now. I have no option but to take the handgun he holds out for me.

I grip it in my hand and feel a chilling, powerful sensation trickle down my spine.

He doesn’t need to say anything for me to know what is happening. This is the weapon I have to use to kill my dad.

Chapter 4

“We’re very glad you came.” His voice has a sickening tone to it. He smiles again, this time showing off his chipped front teeth. The way his cheeks tighten and jaw clenches make it seem like smiling is a painful, arduous act for this man.

I hold back the urge to retort to his ridiculous comment. Yeah, right, like I had any choice.

“What is going on?” I turn around, both surprised and concerned by the fact that the two men who had forcefully taken me to the helicopter remain at the bottom of the stairs, guarding their position. With a few seconds of examining the rooftop, I can tell that this building is full of the ultra-wealthy. On the rooftop, they have three private helicopter pads, a large garden, and a narrow, spiral staircase leading to a glass observatory tower. The rooftop itself has dark-brown stained wooden tiles instead of cement, and instead of the large “H” on the helicopter pads being painted on the cement, they have white gold lining the pads, which causes the light from the lanterns on the roof to refract off it spectacularly.

If this is the time for another meeting at one of their houses, I am so out. I glance at the man in front of me, unmoving with my question. His hand strokes the arsenal of weapons in his belt, and that is the only reminder I need not to mess with him. Never mind, I am so in.

“Follow me,” he says, waving me in his direction as he sets off towards the other end of the rooftop. Seeing that I don’t have another logical option, I promptly comply.

After a few strides, I notice that he is clearly making his way to the edge of the roof, which out of all the possibilities of what this could mean, I can’t even think of one that could be mildly bearable.

“You have to get in that harness.” He narrows his eyes at me while pointing at the contraption staked into the waist-high barrier separating us both from a five-hundred-foot fall to the city streets below. The contraption consists of a system of cables, carabiners, and an automatic relay machine that has a massive rope tied into a huge stake in the floor tile. The entire system looks so messily set up, that the weight of my foot might be enough to rip this all out of place and send me plummeting to my death.

“Excuse me.” I step back, my eyes wide and mind dizzy from looking down the steep drop. If I haven’t mentioned it already, I will admit that I do have a hear of heights. Nothing major, of course—it’s not that I’m a wimp or anything (well, Jake always says I am, but after falling off a cliff as a child, I feel my fear is warranted). Just every time I look down this high out into the open, unguarded from the confines of an airplane or building, I feel nauseous.

“Do you see that deck down there?”

I nod. It is at least five stories down from where the harness is positioned, which is exactly the kind of fall that makes me want to cry.

“Your father is in that apartment.” He refrains from smiling. I can tell he even feels sad to do this—part of him doesn’t want to. But he has to. “All you have to do is walk inside and shoot him. Once you ensure he is dead, walk back outside. We will have two agents on the deck ready to go in and retrieve his body, and we will submerge it into the earth hundreds of miles out into the ocean. Anyone else in the apartment will be apprehended to ensure that they completely forget about the events of tonight, and any evidence, including security cam footage, will be cleaned up. Then you will be free to proceed on with your life.”

“That’s it?” I am surprised by how simple this all is. Not that I’m asking for anything more complicated, it’s just knowing these people, I thought there would be some elaborate plan to carry out this mission.

“Well, hopefully. Once you enter in there, if you are unable to apprehend and kill the target within two minutes, we will send some of our own agents inside. And well, we have our own plan from there. But good thing none of that will be happening today. Right?”

“Right,” I echo back. I can imagine that backup plan ends up with me dead, just as promised before.

“Well, there is no time to waste.” He jangles the thick black harness in the air. “Get in that harness now and clip yourself in. If you drop down directly from our location, you will land directly in the middle of the outdoor deck.”

“Okay.” My body shakes as the weight of the moment hits me.

I have to kill my dad now. I look at the gun in my hand and feel a sudden surge of disgust course through me. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I’m capable, but I have to.

I pull down the harness from the ledge and insert my legs through the holes in the fabric. I pull the thick, rubber-like material over my torso and put the straps around my shoulders. I take the two carabiners attached to the clip on my harness and attach them to the large claw at the end of the cable. The man doesn’t seem too intent on helping me during this process, but luckily, I once went zip-lining for Jake’s birthday, which ended up being an all-around awful experience, so I have a slight idea of how these things work.

I step up onto the concrete barrier and let the rush of adrenaline and gust of wind empower me. The harness restricts all the airspace around my groin, which is a less than comfortable feeling, but that isn’t even close to the biggest problem on my mind right now. For one, once I’m down on the deck, I have to figure out how the hell I even get inside, and once I’m there, I have to somehow find him and then kill him.

Holy crap. I take a deep breath, but that doesn’t do much to help ease the dread and terror building up inside me. Why is he even over here? Is this all a trap?

I stare at the man in front of me, considering making a run for it one last time. That thought disappears as quickly as the pistol appears from his belt. He places one hand on his neck, where the top of the all-black bodysuit he wears stops. A helicopter, this one appearing to be from one of the residents in the building, starts to hover above one of the empty pads to make a landing.

“Go now. We are running out of time.”

He holds his finger above the trigger, and that’s all it takes for me to step backward off the concrete wall and down into the open air below.

Maybe if the fact that I’m at the top of a building in Manhattan at night and strapped to an at best very sketchy rig to try and transport me down to the porch wasn’t all true, it might be fun. But since that is all true, it only adds to the terror of falling slow motion through the sky.

I can do this. I can do this. I try to give myself some reassurance as the rows of windows pass by in slow motion, which is extremely anticlimactic, but still equally terrifying as falling at a faster speed. I refuse to look downward. Once my mind actually realizes how high I am up in the air, it will have a panic attack. It is much easier to try and trick myself that I am falling from a rock wall to the earth below. Yeah, I am good at the whole denial and repressing thing.

Nowadays, it feels like a requirement to navigate through the world. However, the choking sensation of the harness against my private part is a pain that I cannot ignore. At first it starts off as a slight discomfort, but as the fall continues, the life is slowly being squeezed out of my balls (at least it feels that way).

Just as it all becomes unbearable, my legs collide with the floor beneath me, and my entire body falls in slow motion to the floor. Well, that was just as awful as I imagined it.

I drop the gun still clutched in my hand to the floor and stand up, the tension of the cable making it a nearly impossible task. I quickly undo the clips holding my body to the shaky machine above that I swear vibrated a number of times during my fall. Then I climb out of the harness, taking a moment to enjoy the beauty of the skyline of New York City one last time.

If there’s one thing I’m sure about these people, it’s that I can’t trust them. My life will never be able to go on without them here—until I’m dead, they will always want something from me. These people are too evil, too selfish not to use me for as long as they can. All I know is that they will kill me. They will murder me if I don’t murder him.

I pick the gun off the ground.

The handle of the pistol sends an odd energy throughout my body as I walk across the wooden tiles on the porch to the large sliding glass door that leads inside. At the edge of the barrel of the gun there is a silencer attached to the muzzle.

I prepare to open the door, bracing my body for the inevitable next event. I look one last time at the top of the building and watch as the harness and cable ascend to the roof. I frantically look around at the electric fireplace and light-blue cushions on the oak couches, searching for something out of place.

They can’t leave me here. Suddenly a harrowing thought crosses my mind. My dad may not be here at all. They may be trying to make it look like I’m breaking in. This could all be a trap.

I drop the gun to the ground. I can’t do this. I can’t keep living like this. I can’t let the fear rule over me. I can’t let them manipulate me into being their tortured assassin.

I can’t let them win.

Well, this is awkward.

I stand frozen still as my dad opens the sliding glass door, emerging out onto the porch. He has a white robe on, and by the way in which he shivers when he first comes out, I have a feeling that he is wearing just the robe.

“Um, Sam, hey!” He has way too much enthusiasm in his voice. He’s trying to hide how messed up this all is as I am trying to ignore it.

I let my eyes wander past him, examining the furniture inside the apartment. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots between the clothes littered across the leather chairs and my dad’s purpose for being there. 

What a horny sack of shit. I can’t help but be furious every time my dad decides to be with another woman. He will never meet someone as amazing as my mom, but something tells me he knows that too.

“What are you doing here?” He eyes the gun on the ground. He steps back. To say he is nervous is an understatement. He must know exactly why I’m here, and I don’t care.

I narrow my eyes at him without saying a word. I close my eyes and block out all the emotions, the love, and the admiration I have for him. I tune out the voices in my head screaming at me not to.

All I let run through every cell in my body are the anger and the fear. I can’t let these people win. I can’t let these people win. 

I pick up the gun off the floor, my hands shaking wildly as I raise the barrel to point directly at him. 

I notice a dark figure begin to descend from the cable down to the porch. It must be them. I have to act fast.

“Don’t do it.” My dad backpedals towards the door as fast as he can. I let my finger hover above the trigger, trying to hold back the tears as I take a deep breath in, preparing to fire. “They are lying to you!”

I don’t have it in my heart to respond to him. If I do, I will collapse. I have to shoot. I have to kill him, and then forget about this moment forever.

I exhale and press my finger down on the trigger.

As soon as I force my finger to clamp down on the trigger, I drop the gun. Every muscle in my body feels alive with the rush of adrenaline, but my mind instantly regrets it.

I close my eyes, not wanting to see the aftermath of my destruction. But the painful sound of a wall of glass shattering shakes my eyes awake. Everything feels like it is simultaneously in slow motion yet moving at a thousand miles per hour.

I open my eyes.

Thousands of shards of glass litter the porch and floor of the home as my dad stands there unharmed. I missed. I’m one of the best shots in the world, and I miss now... great, just great.

I want to run away. He is standing frozen still in front of me, his jaw clenched, visibly holding back a scream. Dozens of shards of glass have pierced his skin, causing a steady stream of blood to ooze out in multiple locations. Meanwhile, the woman whose house he is at has woken up, and her high-pitched scream of terror only adds to the horror of the moment.

I bend down and pick up the gun at my feet.

As the figure in the air nears a dozen feet above the porch, I know I have to act fast. I have to kill him. I hold the gun up and aim the barrel directly at him. He screams as glass shards tear through his skin with his body wildly jerking backward.

“Please!” he screams. Tears fill his eyes, and the tension of the moment suddenly gets to me.

I can’t close my eyes anymore. I can’t deny what is happening. I look at his body, which trembles with fear, and his face, which looks maddened with desperation. This is the man that I love the most in the world. Even after everything, even after him risking my own life for his dreams, I can’t end him.

Even if I do somehow live after killing him, none of it will matter.

I’ll never be able to live down the guilt. I’ll never be able to truly believe that he is an evil man. In my heart, I know that I would be lying to myself.

In my heart, I know that this is wrong.

I continue pointing the gun at him, not able to bring myself to either press down on the trigger or lower my arm. In a resounding bang, the front door of the apartment falls down as a group of masked figures runs inside.

A hysterical cry for help floods my ears as the figure falling through the sky along the cable touches down on the wooden tiles right next to me. The chaos is all too much for my senses to handle. The darkness of the night sky above absorbs my vision as the pressure of the moment and deadly amounts of anxiety coursing through me overwhelm my mind and body’s ability to function.

Everything hits me at once.

The disgusting, evil side of my mind that has the ability to kill almost anyone and do almost anything if I deem it necessary.

The sorrow from attempting to murder my own dad causing my body to feel weak and heavy.

The fear.

And the fist. It connects with the side of my head in one painful blow, causing the pistol to fly from my hands to the ground. Out of the corner of the red circles clouding my vision, both my father and the woman, who has short black hair and an identical white robe as my father, are apprehended by the people rushing into the house.

Well, apprehended is too nice of a word. More like brutally kidnapped and assaulted. The same thing is happening to me. I close my eyes, battling the general pain in each of my ligaments along with the localized pain in the side of my head.

I have lost control of everything. I am at their mercy now—my time is up.

I tried to kill my father.

And now they are going to try to kill me.

Except, I know they will succeed.

Chapter 5

This time they didn’t knock me out or drug me with any horrible black liquid.

Something tells me that they want me to feel every ounce of fear as they drag my body back into the harness and send my back up along with the cable to the rooftop of the building. They want to break me.

And if that is their goal, they are remarkably successful at it. The entire time I dangle in the air, my body hyperventilates. Normally I feel calm in these kinds of situations—after all, Deadwave, with its constant waves of zombies and ruthless players always trying to kill me, often makes everything else in the world seem mundane. But this time is different. This isn’t mundane at all. This is terrifying.

This is real life. And right now, I really wish that this were all a video game and that even if they do succeed in ending me, my eyes will open and be welcomed into the light of the real world. But if they kill me, all I will see is blackness.

I know that, and I’m not ready for it. I can’t let my mind die with so much guilt. I can’t let myself leave this world without ever truly experiencing any happiness in it.

“Help me pull him in!” The same man who welcomed me upon my exit from the helicopter stands at the edge of the building to pull me back onto the roof and unclip the cables from my harness. Another masked figure approaches the edge, and together both of them pull my body onto the roof. On the way down, my groin felt like it was on fire. This time, I don’t feel a thing even though my crotch is under a lot more pressure from the force of the machine lifting my body against gravity. The adrenaline in my body is too great to feel anything. My will to escape this is too strong.

Only one thought is breaking through the terror inside me.

Jump. Do it yourself. Don’t let them win.

Even if I do have the guts to do it (which let’s be real, I’m scared of heights, so there’s no way I’m going to willfully jump off), I don’t have a choice. Both my arms are being restrained by the two people on either side of me. I’m helpless. There’s nothing I can do but let my body be dragged along with them.

“You must think I’m a liar.” The man sneers.

I cough, the pain from my shoulders practically being ripped off preventing me from talking clearly. “No,” I finally spit out.

“Then you must be crazy. We know your fear.” He laughs as he digs his fingernails into my shirt. Both hands on my shoulders push me downward, overwhelming my legs. My body scrapes against the concrete of the helicopter pad as they force me to sit down a few feet from the same bright red helicopter we flew here in.

The masked figure, who wears a terrifying white mask with a smile on it, clips another thick metal cable into the carabiner on my belay loop. What the hell is that for? I turn around and follow the path of the cable with my eyes, only to have the greatest surge of anxiety in my life overcome my mind.

The cable connects right at the bottom of the helicopter. They must want to drag me along with the helicopter through the night sky. They want to dangle my body with zero protection hundreds of feet high in the night sky, traveling at dozens of miles per hour.

“Please, no!” Every muscle in my body explodes forward as I try to somehow break free from the cable. They have tightened the harness so firmly around me that I can’t even slip out if I try. And even if I could slip out of it, something tells me the masked figure behind me won’t be too keen on letting that happen.

“Anything else but this! Do it any other way!” I elbow the person behind me, hoping to aim for its balls if it has any. The loud grunt tells me that I connected.

The man without the mask stands at the edge of the helicopter pad with open arms. The second another two masked figures approach with my dad in between them, he claps. Seeing the distraught face of my father and the furious expression in his eyes seems to bring the man great joy.

They force my dad to sit down a few feet away from me and attach him to another cable that connects at the base of the helicopter. Looks like they have the same end planned for both of us, and whether that involves colliding with a building or being dropped to the ground from the clouds, I don’t wanna find out. I can’t let this happen.

My range of motion compared to the other times I have been kidnapped by these people is actually quite high, which makes it easy for me to turn around, stand up, and in one swift motion kick the man behind me as hard as I can.

“Now, now, behave, Sammie.” The man walks in front of me and smiles. Chills course down my spine as I connect with the darkness at the core of his eyes. He looks like a miserable human being, someone who has let their sadness and anger ferment inside them until it all turned into a beast of its own.

And now that beast is going to kill me.

“Stop this! I’m innocent! I’m innocent! Please! Save me from this. Just leave me alone. You have him here now! He’s right here. What else do you want from me? Why do you want to do any of this?” I scream as the masked figure behind me puts me in an intense choke hold. I can’t help but cry in this moment. My rule of not crying in front of other people has been broken way too much recently, and I am not happy about it, but I’m not happy about a lot of things.

“You know too much.” He stands right in front of me with his chest puffed out. The oxygen headed to my brain lessens, causing a heavy pounding sensation in my head. “You had to kill him so that the covenant didn’t break. But you failed. And what must be done will be finished. But there can’t be a living soul on Earth who knows about this. You can’t live. I didn’t want to do this, but I have to. That’s why we are killing both of you.”

“Stop choking him!” my dad screams. “You don’t have to do any of this, Drew. You’re making a mistake, and I promise you will pay for it!”

Despite the fact that I am literally choking to death, it still occurs to me how messed up it is that my dad knows his killer on a first-name basis. If he didn’t have a damn gun, I could maybe try and make a move on the man behind me, but it’s useless.

“Pay for it?” Drew motions for the man behind me to stop choking me and walk over to my dad so he can stand right in front of him and stare at him in his eyes. My dad also has a masked figure behind him, the identical masks all of them are wearing looking extremely creepy in the light glow of the lanterns and city lights refracting off the white gold. “You didn’t pay for your mistakes. For the life you ended. So why should I?”

“You bastard.” The expression of hatred in my dad’s eyes beams through the night. Even from afar, I can see the tension in his neck and veins popping on his forehead. “I paid for it. I still am paying for it. I have an entire coalition against me, dozens of you trying to stop me from the wealth and achievements I have earned. I have had so much in my life taken away, almost everyone I’ve loved. You will pay for this too.”

“Don’t act like you earned this. You stole it. And it’s time we take it back. Time that all of us do.”

“You have no idea what I did.” He lunges forward to try and punch Drew, only to be stopped by the cable. Drew laughs as my dad flies backward, and I have to admit that in any other moment, if my level of terror were a lot lower than this, I would probably have laughed too, especially given that the harness and robe put together is really revealing some parts of my dad no one needs to see. “No one has any idea. None of you do, but one day you will find out. One day you will see why I did that. And you will pay for this. I know this has not been approved by the council. And if you don’t think they will find out and then connect this back to you and whoever else you have planned this in conjunction with, then you are crazy. They will find out and destroy your life. I promise you that.”

“How do you know this hasn’t been approved by the council?” Drew pokes my father in his chest, but keeps his distance so that if my dad tries to hit him again, he will make a fool out of himself. “And even if this is not, do you think I’m stupid? No one will find out about this. You already rented a boat from Long Island that you planned to take out to international waters with Sam to celebrate his feeble victory in your favorite father-son activity. But then tragedy struck. It will be a great story for the tabloids. And a great case that my friend in the NYPD is confident he can close rather quickly. After all, accidents happen.” He smiles and pulls a plastic container out of his belt full of pills. He opens it up and swallows something inside it.

“You’re such a sad, lonely man. I get it.” My dad keeps his voice calm, and the slow, mannered, charismatic way about him shines through. “I get why you need to do this. Your casino empire has all but fallen, you were too slow to try and capitalize on sports betting or gambling online. You are stupid. That’s why you are doing this. You think a change up top will make everything more profitable—that it will make you rich. But you have no idea what I have coming.”

“He was my cousin.” Drew’s tone is cold as he fumbles for a pistol in his belt. “He was my cousin! And look what you did to his empire! You ruined it! You destroyed it. I was supposed to serve on that board. I have more than enough equity in the company. I have more than enough power. You decided to manipulate your team and block me out. But I won’t let that happen once you’re gone.”

“From the beginning I have known this is you and known why you are doing it.” My dad shakes his head. “It’s kind of amazing how much people you got to believe your bullshit. How much people you got to care about something that happened so many years ago, and then used that to try and convince everyone that I’m failing them. I’d say that is almost smart of you.”

“Am I supposed to say thank you?” Drew keeps the pistol firmly gripped in his hand but refuses to point it at my father. He likely needs those pills to be able to do this; he can’t bring himself to do it any other way.

“You are after you hear about my plan to resurrect Chimera from the shadows. My plan to make it the most profitable company on Earth in a year’s time. I know it is necessary, and I know it has been too long. And I promise the wait will be worth it. It will be more than worth it when you are worth tens of billions of dollars.”

“You are such a liar.” Drew narrows his eyes at my dad. “You think I believe that? You think I actually will fall for that silly joke? You must think I’m the dumbest human being on Earth. You will never be able to take a company that loses hundreds of millions each year and make it generate tens of billions in a year’s time. That’s impossible.”

“It is. I promise it is. I’ve already alluded to the council some of the details. I will be talking with them at the upcoming meeting next Friday. In fact, Sam has gotten approval to be inducted as well; he doesn’t even have to stay at the Ivanwald home that most of the boys have to be initiated in for a year. They want him to start making an impact immediately.”

“Why should I give a crap if you are talking to them about it?”

“Because they are planning to support me again. They will give this plan their backing. And then you will be left alone trying to stop me, unless you decide to join me in changing this world forever.”

“And what happens if they don’t back your plan?”

My dad pauses for a moment as a powerful gust of wind whips through the night sky, causing the hairs on my body to stand straight up.

“Then you can kill me. You can do whatever you want to me. The council will likely make me pay for this as well.” My dad takes a deep breath, his body seeming to be on the verge of collapsing. “But you have to get the council to stop approving hazing my kid so that you can try and kill him. You have to leave him alone no matter what. He will become one of us next weekend. We will talk in private later, and I will review things with the council. But until then, rogue, jealous members can’t oust me. You have to listen to me. You have to trust me. The wait will be worth it.”

My dad speaks with such confidence that he makes it seem like he is the one with the power, even though Drew has the gun, the helicopter, and the army of masked figures working for him ready to carry out any of his desired tasks.

“Unhook the men from the cable,” Drew says after a long pause where he glanced up into the stars. “Let’s go.”

A hand reaches around from my back, and I feel the tension from the cable leave my body as the thick metal wire falls to the ground. The grip holding my arms behind me disappears, allowing me to climb out of the harness and let it fall to the ground. The man behind me then runs away, likely to clear the evidence of their crime from the roof, as I stand on the helicopter pad, staring at Drew.

We are gonna live. They are letting us go. It worked, he is magic.

My dad throws the harness that used to be attached to him to the ground, letting it skid across the helipad and down onto the walkway surrounding it. He shoots the masked figure, who looks identical to the one that was behind me, with the dirtiest look before glancing at me.

Drew walks past my father, not saying a word to him as he ascends the steps into the helicopter. The two figures follow, one carrying the heavy machine with a cable inside that they used to drag us up to the roof with along with a metal spike, and the other with the two harnesses in hand.

The door to the helicopter closes, and the blades of the aircraft accelerate. Within seconds they are off the ground and headed away to some evil lair, or more likely they are headed to the roof of another building in one of the five boroughs.

I watch them fly away, both mesmerized and terrified from what happened. Then my dad wraps his arms around me. He has no tears in his eyes and not even a bit of tension in his muscles.

His robe still somehow manages to stay intact on his body, and his arms feel both strong and alive. I have never seen my dad like this—I suppose most people haven’t seen their dads like this. And on all levels, I hope it remains that way.

Here we are, two grown men hugging each other in the middle of a helicopter pad after almost dying on a chilly October night, when I should be out celebrating my victory. The bar of what I consider to be weird in life keeps on being raised, and somehow life always seems to surpass it.

But part of me is still amazed by this, amazed by him. Even though he is butt-ass naked in a robe, I now idolize him even more. The thought of me shooting a bullet at him, and aiming for his head, suddenly hits me, and tears silently stream down my face.

My dad seems to notice, and he only embraces me even tighter. The familiar warmth of his arms, that I have experienced only a handful of times throughout my life, has never ceased to comfort me.

“They won’t bother you again,” he whispers into my ear. I can feel the stubble of his beard rubbing up against my cheek. “I promise.”

Chapter 6

The man is a brick wall.

No, that’s a huge under exaggeration. He’s a freaking bunker buried hundreds of feet beneath the earth, prepared to survive a nuclear war.

I can’t break through to him even if I try.

For the past fifteen hours (give or take a few), I have tried to get him to talk. I have constantly been pestering him, first logically asking what the hell was he talking about. But after he refused to answer that after asking at least a dozen times, I switched my tactics and commented on the dark bags under his eyes, hoping to probe into why he is so stressed.

I even brought up Mom and asked him how she would feel about this. He refused to comment. After my mom’s death, he has never even mentioned her name except for only a handful of times. In his mind, it is easier to pretend she never existed. But in reality, he is just trying to hide from the pain. He is just refusing to tell me the truth: that this massive lie he’s not sharing with me and secretive group he got caught up with are the reason for her death. He himself probably has repressed that fact so much, he even tries to hide from it. But it has to be true, and that fact causes every ounce of me to boil with anger. I felt all that guilt for years because I thought me failing to be a good son killed her.

Now I know I was wrong. My dad would rather have me believe that than know the truth. My dad would rather have me see him spending his little spare time with other women, drowning out all his emotions, instead of for once opening up to me and having a real conversation with me about how we lost the best person in both of our lives.

I mentioned all of this to him. I tried to press all his buttons and bait him into exploding so that he could share with me everything he has been hiding in the darkness. I want him to admit that this is all his fault, instead of having to listen to him blame his problems on the rest of the world.

He remained unfazed the entire time, whether we were in a car on the way to the airport, a charter plane my dad had called to take us back to San Diego, or my dad’s own self-driving sports car that we headed to the Chimera Research Facility in.

All he says is that he has something to show me. A very exciting development, and that after he reveals me the big news, he will tell me his plan. The same plan that he is telling the council, and the same plan that has me directly at the center.

I step into the restricted area of the research facility, and when my dad scans his finger on the machine in the hallway, two doors open up into a massive room. A blast of cold air connects with my skin as the bright LED lights lining the floors burn my eyes.

This is the crown jewel of my dad’s entire existence. At the center of the San Pasqual Valley in the outskirts of the suburbs of San Diego is the massive research facility for Chimera. It has a massive barbed wire fence lining the compound, multiple lakes, and state-of-the art security that is on par with most military bases. It is undoubtedly one of the most top-secret and well-guarded private research facilities in the world.

But what lies inside is worth hiding.

That’s what makes my dad so proud of it. In fact, if he had it his way, he would spend all his days back here, developing new products in the lab instead of trying to manage and market the engine for gamers and developers that Chimera uses as its sole way to make a profit. My dad may be the Chief Executive Officer of this company, but he still can’t truly do what he wants—he has too much responsibility. But if he could do what he wants, he would be right here in this massive room, working right alongside the engineers undertaking one of the most advanced projects in this world.

Contained inside this building is the secret to immortality—a way for the human mind to live forever in a virtual world. The answer is Chimera Life Pods. My dad has only taken me here once, when he first told me that they were working on developing this world-changing product and that one day soon he wants me to take the lead of the company. But seeing it all for a second time doesn’t make the whole thing any less mind-blowing. The hundreds upon hundreds of white, cylindrical vessels lining every space in the room are eerily beautiful. The pods themselves are all simplistic, yet sleek in their design, along with the hardware of the pods themselves, including the system of tubes meant to deliver the required liquid and nutrients to the people inside. At the center of the room there is a large holograph dozens of feet high that displays the health and status of each of the pods.

Upon a quick analysis of the screen, one startling fact jumps out at me. Some of the pods are occupied—some people’s consciousnesses are already enveloped in a virtual world.

“I have big news.” My dad smiles, extending his arms towards the holograph just about a hundred feet in front of us. Despite the brightness of the LED lights on the floor, the subsequent lack of light on any of the walls or ceilings causes the holograph to glow brightly. “We have our first round of people in the Chimera Life Pods.”

“I can see that.” I try to hide the excitement from my voice, although I am very excited. I don’t want him thinking I have forgotten about what he said to Drew. I won’t let him distract away from that this time.

“They are gonna be in here for the next week. We have exactly one hundred people who volunteered to do it. Well, obviously, we are compensating them nicely, but it still took a while to get a hundred people to agree to something so crazy.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.” I look at the number of Life Pods that appear to be slightly iridescent, the silhouettes of the bodies inside even slightly visible. Unlike the first time that I came here, when the entire room was empty, a few people wander the room, holding glass tablets in their hands, while a handful of others monitor everything from the two control rooms on either side of the entrance.

“We are making sure to keep them safe, though.” He has a special emphasis in his words as he steps forward to come within a few feet of the first row of pods. “I have staff here literally all hours of the day and night to monitor their health, fix any bugs or glitches, and to communicate with the participants inside the virtual worlds to see how they are doing. Their brain activity is even being monitored through the chips we put in their brains.”

“That is both creepy and awesome.” I instinctively feel my head, the thought of a chip permanently living in my brain seeming both super cool (after all, being bionic would be sick) and absolutely terrifying.

“It is certainly very exciting. If everything goes well, which it has through its first days, we will begin to be able to roll out the product by the end of the month.” He looks right at me, the joy in his eyes both heartwarming and disturbing to see. “Obviously, we will have to start small, just with this location, but we can look to collect preorders nationwide, and even internationally too to try and see the demand for the product and where we can expand our facilities to in future months. Right now, we are building a mega-facility on the East Coast, in D.C., capable of holding several hundred thousand.”

“Wow, so this is really happening. Like happening right now.” I exhale, a rush of adrenaline flowing through me as I think back to the conversation my dad had with me about a month ago in this room. He told me that this would change society forever—that it would be a solution to everything threatening to collapse civilization and result in us becoming the wealthiest people on Earth. That thought is beyond exciting, and if it can come true, it might almost make all the hell of the last few weeks worth it.

But I don’t know if this hell will ever end.

“Yeah it is, after years and years of work. I’m even beginning to grow impatient myself, but I’m certainly not the first.”

“You mentioned this a bit last night.” Now I’m intrigued, but I also don’t try and show it. My dad is the kind of person that when he knows he has power over your emotions, he will use it to his advantage. “What exactly did you mean?”

“Drew was one of the first investors and a relative of Jake’s dad who helped to cofound the company with me. He holds a ton of equity in the company and has grown very angry over the last few years as I have only asked him for more money and shown nothing in return. He isn’t the only one angry at me—the entire group we are a part of is.” My dad rubs the dark circles under his eyes, trying to loosen the tension out of his face.

“I told them this process would take years and tens of billions of dollars, and they believed me. So, they threw their assets behind it, backed by their venture capital firms, and gambled a lot of their personal fortunes on me. The success of this entire company relied on its continued funding from our backers. And although from the outside we look like a burgeoning software company, no one truly knows how much cash we are burning through. And the people investing in Chimera are tired of it.”

“Shit, so they tried to oust you as CEO and after you refused, they tried to kill you?”

“Yes, exactly.” He nods. “Well, it’s even more than that. They decided to check the books only to see that the numbers weren’t adding up. They saw that the capital expended on the Life Pod project was astronomically high, and that it may be near impossible to turn a profit. Soon they realized that there is no way that all of their money was going to the places it was on paper. They realized that the money they were investing into the company wasn’t funding the projects I told them that they were.”

“Dad, how much money did you steal?” I sometimes question how much my dad gets paid as CEO. All of my life, I have always remembered living a pretty grandiose lifestyle. We never just got everything we needed, we got almost everything we wanted—at least materially. But knowing my dad, he will always want more.

“I didn’t steal any money.” He grows defensive, his tone turning much colder. “It is much different than that. I’m hiding money and funneling billions to other projects. I haven’t done this as much in recent years, but in the past, I did this extensively. It’s all going to secret research projects that no one knows about—not even any of the senior executives in the company. Not even a single human on this planet.”

“Secret research projects?” I look at the Life Pods, trying to imagine what he could be trying to keep secret in a company that is already planning to send people to virtual worlds. He wants to upload people’s minds to the cloud and have them reside in a computer, what could be crazier than that?

“Yes, top-secret stuff.” My dad looks around and pauses for a second, making sure that no one is listening. “The real reason Chimera was founded wasn’t to be an engine for game developers and the new generation of entertainment. All of it is part of a larger infrastructure we are setting up, a larger project that will completely alter the fabric of society. Even this, the Life Pods, they are just to make money. We are marketing them as being worthy of accomplishing some noble mission, but the real thing that we are waiting for won’t be possible for another twenty years.”

“What are you setting this all up for? What are you waiting for?” I press.

“I can’t tell you.” He steps closer to me while keeping his voice low. “There are some things you can’t know about right now. It’s better off that way—it has to be that way. When the time comes, you will know about everything, and you will be prepared to deliver it to the world. But for now, that can’t be our focus.”

“After all we have been through, please tell me.” I keep my voice low, but somehow with the ferocity of my tone I still make it sound like I am screaming.

“No. No, you don’t understand. And it has to stay that way. Trust me when I say you need to be patient. Today is not the day for that. Today is the day to focus on how we can turn this into a trillion-dollar empire, and keep our investors happy, keep our lives intact, and keep the billions in capital flowing to research and development.”

“Our investors?” Him saying those words sends chills down my spine. About the most someone has invested in me is giving me free ice cream or a free T-shirt, but those transactions don’t often come with strings attached.

“Yes, our investors. You’re now working for this company. Deadwave is done. I know things happen fast, but this is it, you are going to be one of the leaders at Chimera now. And we both have to face this challenge together.” He places a hand on my shoulder, the whole fatherly affection thing a lost cause with him—he never fails to somehow make it a bit awkward. “The vast majority, like over ninety percent of our capital, has been raised from the group that Drew and I are a part of. The same group that you will be joining at our annual meeting. It always takes place on the second Friday of October on Blake’s Island on a lake in Maine. This time happens to be Friday the thirteenth, which is rather fitting for the dark times we find ourselves in.”

“This all sounds like some insane cult.” I narrow my eyes at him, the idea of joining this mysterious organization both tantalizing and horrifying.

“It is. The most insane and powerful cult in the world. They have a fancier name for themselves. But it’s not my job to tell you. If you know about their existence, and know the truth, you either have to be killed or join them. I don’t want to take your free will away from you, but I do want to detail you my plan to make this company billions so that you and I can live. You will find out more about them later.”

“Okay, okay.” I urge him to keep going, my heart pounding in my chest and my mind racing at a million miles per hour.

“When I said we would become the richest men on Earth, it isn’t a hope. It is an absolute necessity.” My dad pauses, and I think about how I have a ten percent stake in this company waiting for me when I’m twenty-one. He has voting rights over the stake right now, but in the future—well, it will be mine. “We have to make this company worth trillions of dollars by like yesterday, so that our investors can start to see a huge piece of the billions of dollars in profit coming in. People never hand over their wallets without strings attached, and these people gave us billions upon billions of dollars. Some of these guys have most of their life savings betted on us, and they will kill us—they have already tried to—if we don’t make money fast. I have already gone against the orders of the council several times—I haven’t given access to all the records, and haven’t given power to the people they have wanted. I am literally on the chopping block—we both are. They like to make everyone pay with blood if they can’t make them pay with cash.

“But we can, and we will. They know about the Life Pods, but they don’t know how profitable they will become once at scale, and you are the person in charge of making that happen. It is your job to ensure two things: that federal oversight and regulations on our company remain at zero, and that a Universal Basic Income bill is passed. If we want tens of millions of people living in a virtual world, then we need to target the economically displaced and disadvantaged people in this country. We are lucky in that most people fit that description. Most people are desperate and searching for something to help them escape. We can provide that, but they don’t have enough money to make us any profit. The government can offer adequate payment, right around a thousand dollars a month. And if we can get a universal basic income implemented as an expansion of the Social Security program, or even government stipends to people planning to migrate to virtual worlds, our product will become an instant success overnight.

“We will have hundreds of billions in revenue. And we will get to live to see another day.”

“I love this plan.” The mechanical side of my brain is absolutely loving the idea of exploiting the government and poor to make billions of dollars. It’s nothing revolutionary; almost every massive, world-changing company has done something similar. But this time I get to be at the center. “You really think that is all possible, though? Where would the money even come from for that legislation? And is any of this even close to being ethical?”

“I know it’s possible, and you will be the one to make it happen.” My dad has such a confident tone to his voice that I can’t help but feel empowered. The questions and doubts I have about everything melt in my mind in the moment to be replaced only by ambition and excitement. Sometimes it’s easier to get caught up in a vision rather than the facts. “You will have support and guidance from the council, along from me as well. You won’t be in this alone. It will be your job to lead and to become the greatest political lobbyist the world has ever seen. It will be like real-life Deadwave.”

“What do you mean, like real-life Deadwave?” I look at him with wide eyes. As much as I am tired of the game—I need a rest after playing it for literally five years straight—to get the same rush flowing through me would be awesome. “Are all the senators now gonna be bloodthirsty zombies?”

“No. But you have to win at all costs. You must do anything and everything to make our mission happen.” He runs a hand through his hair that he dyed brown (the color it used to be before it grayed) and widens his eyes. “If this doesn’t happen, we lose everything. We both will die—in agreements like this they won’t allow us to fail. We have to win, and to make that happen, you may have to do some unconventional things.”

“Okay, I’m up for it. I’ll do it.”

“Notice how I didn’t ask you.” My dad smiles, as if coercing me into such a high-pressure, life-altering role is funny. “You don’t have an option. But I know you can do this. You have already proved to everyone, by winning the Deadwave World Championship given the circumstances, that working under the pressure of the world is more than possible for you.”

“I’ll make this happen.” I nod at my dad, the killer determination erupting inside me. “I promise.”

He wraps his arm around me, and we both turn to look out at the sea of pods.

I finally have a chance to make my dad proud. I finally have a chance to change this world—to become powerful. A wave of energy overcomes my body as I smile.

Looking out at this massive room and knowing that this is the beginning of something that is going to alter American history forever sends chills down my spine. This feeling is one of the greatest highs.

For once, I don’t feel scared. I feel unstoppable. I feel powerful. And in this moment, I even feel happy.

Chapter 7

I ran to the hospital as soon as she called me.

Well, I guess I didn’t run—I hailed a ride using my hologlasses.

I didn’t take a shower, instead opting to bring a comb in my pocket, and I also forgot to apply deodorant, which normally I wouldn’t care about, but since I’m going to see Riva, part of me does care about my appearance.

The fastest I could get up to Los Angeles was in two hours, which was both an uncomfortable and stressful car ride. For one, my own stink seemed to permeate throughout the entire car, and even I got annoyed by the faint stench of my body odor.            

But the thought at the forefront of my mind has nothing to do with how I smell. It is maybe the craziest thought I have ever had: can I bring Riva’s dad to the Chimera Research Facility and immerse his consciousness into a virtual world before he dies?

Time will only tell, that’s for sure. The problem is time is a bitch because it goes by too fast, and there is never enough of it to go around. 

About thirty minutes into the car ride, as I’m passing Oceanside, its beautiful, abandoned homes along the shoreline visible from the highway, I realize that I messed up. I should have gotten into a plane or something faster to head up to Los Angeles—after all, the man is literally dying. He was already in the intensive care unit, but overnight I woke up to calls from Riva that he has taken a turn for the worse. We had video-chatted the night before as I updated her on my crazy last twenty-four hours (although not the part about me killing my father), and she filled me in on her dad’s condition. 

I promised her I would drive up first thing the next morning to be there for her—after all, I have nothing to do until this upcoming Friday, when both my dad and I will head to Maine. Everything seemed okay when we talked. Well, as okay as things could be, given the fact that her dad is in critical condition and my own dad is trying to avoid us both getting killed. But things turned for the worse real fast after a seizure following open-heart surgery, and now I am here, sprinting through a row of doors into the large, empty waiting room of the hospital.

This better all work out. I take a deep breath. I never thought I would be so worried about someone dying whom I don’t even know. I try to ignore the selfish reason behind my preoccupation: if her dad gets to reside in a Life Pod, that would be one of the best stories to use for marketing ever.

The reason I’d like to believe that I want him to survive so badly is because I know how much her dad means to her—if she loses him, she will be crushed. I can’t let her feel that way; I don’t want her to have to go through the pain that I did (or more accurately, the pain that I refuse to confront). By the sounds of it, he is giving up on life. He is unresponsive to treatments thus far, has uttered that he wants to die several times, and seems content to let his organs shut down.

But Riva knows this isn’t the real him making this decision. This is the version of her father that has been hollowed out by his addiction and feels like he has no other reason to exist but to consume alcohol to drown out the pain of losing his legs and the ability to provide for his family. He feels as if everything is over, just as millions upon millions of people do. But Chimera can bring him hope. The Life Pods can bring him happiness—we just have to get him there alive.

“I’m here to visit Carlos Oldago.” I wait behind the counter as the speaker processes my request and searches for his name in the database. If it weren’t for United States law requiring all hospitals to treat the uninsured when in dire health, then Carlos would likely already be dead. Only legal residents of the United States can be insured by health care companies that have coverage for hospitals in this country; meanwhile, unauthorized immigrants like him are given no path to citizenship, and thus no path to health care either. He has always had to wait to go to the hospital until he is dying like this, and there are only so many times someone can go through that pain before it is too much.

I can’t let this happen again. I can’t let him die.

“He is on the sixth floor, suite six-zero-six,” the person inside the speaker responds. In reality, there is no person inside the circular terminal at the center of the waiting room (although when I was little, I always used to think that talking computers were people trapped inside), but the computer inside is even smarter than a human.

I nod my head and walk to the elevator at the far wall of the waiting room. The large waiting room of the hospital has extremely high ceilings. Old blue couches line the white columns on the gray marble floor. A large skylight above the center of the room allows the darkness to pile into the room and leave the atmosphere with a heavy vibe.

It only makes it that much more difficult for me to step into the elevator and press the floor number six on the control pad inside. This is the moment I’m dreading. The moment where I find out if he can make it out of this hospital and onto an airplane alive.

I gulp, the feeling of the elevator rising floor by floor causing an odd churning in my stomach. A number of messages flash across my hologlasses from my dad. Since I messaged him about the condition of Riva’s father, he instantly had the idea to try and get him to go into one of the Life Pods. I didn’t even have to ask him. And once Riva gave her permission, my dad went crazy. He has now literally been updating me every two minutes on his progress as he worked to get a charter plane at three in the morning to Los Angeles, then got on that charter plane and arrived in Los Angeles, where he is right now waiting outside of the hospital in a large white van for Carlos, Riva, and me to emerge.

This better work. I exhale as the elevator doors open, welcoming me to the front desk on the sixth floor. Like most businesses nowadays, the maintenance of the hospital itself has gone to the wayside, as most Americans don’t even have enough money to get treated for basic ailments. That’s why I almost narrow my eyes in shock at the green paint on the walls beginning to peel off, along with the floors appearing to be dirty and cracked.

The second I connect with Riva standing at the front desk, talking to several human workers at the hospital, any disgust I have for the cleanliness of the hospital disappears. Despite the lack of funds being funneled into this industry, this hospital is still trying its best, and I instantly notice the bleak expression in the eyes of everyone behind the desk signaling that they don’t know how to help.

I walk up behind Riva, not wanting to interrupt, but also not wanting to put my arm around her and scare her.

So instead I listen, without anyone seeming to notice or care. Riva’s thick, black hair is tied in a cute bun behind her head, loose strands peeking out wildly, mimicking the movements of her hands. No doubt a night of no sleep has done her in. From the side of her profile, her bloodshot eyes stand out.

The words that spill out of Riva’s mouth, however, are impossible to miss, with them coming forth in an almost equal intensity as the tears that pour out of her eyes. The entire scene wrenches my heart apart.

“There has to be a way for him to make it.” She shakes her head and throws her hands up in frustration. The two women and one man gathered behind the tall granite counter separating them look both equal parts stressed and scared. “There has to be! Stop telling me no and start telling me how I can make this happen.”

“Ms. Oldago, we all highly advise against discharging your father from our care.” One woman in a white coat with black hair, dark skin, and glasses outstretches her hand across the counter. She seems so natural at this, the calm tone to her voice, gentle demeanor, and empathetic touch seem to be an impossible combination after being screamed at.

“You can’t stop me from discharging him.” Riva leans forward, a harsh tone to her voice. Seeing her in this state—where she is taking control and doing anything for her loved one—is only making me like her more. “I already filled out all the paperwork. I won’t sue you no matter what happens. I promise. Just help me get him to live until we get back to San Diego.”

“Given the situation, we can’t offer anything but our own care.” The man in an identical white coat to the two women speaks up. He has black hair and a soft face covered in smooth skin. “No other option is within reason. It would be grossly irresponsible of us if we allowed him to leave, never mind enter a virtual world upon his exit.”

She sighs, the vexation seeping out of her nostrils. She stops crying and instead only a pure rage consumes her, causing her muscles to tense and her eyes to lock on the people in front of her. Something tells me that if there wasn’t a desk, she would be screaming at them in their faces and slapping some sense into them.

“Are you freaking stupid?” Her voice booms off the walls and echoes down the hallway. Good thing both the halls and main part of the floor are nearly empty, or else she would have dozens of people staring at her. “You think that your level of care is better than a route to immortality? You can’t save him, you are right. None of you are capable of that. The entire stupid medical establishment can’t truly heal anyone, they only keep people alive. And my dad is tired of that. He deserves more than this. He needs to live, and I will let him.”

“Ms. Oldago.” The man is now getting defensive. It is almost funny to see his fat lips quiver with anger as he speaks. “The medical establishment you speak of has saved hundreds of millions of lives in this century alone. Your pipe dream of a remedy will only kill him, and I’m in the business of keeping people alive, so that they can have a chance to truly live again. And I can’t give you my consent on him leaving our care. That would be the stupidest move of my career.”

“You probably haven’t worked long enough to do something more stupid.” Riva has a nastiness to her tone. This side of her I have seen before. It’s the same side of her that comes out in games of Deadwave, the determined, confident part of her that will let no one get in her way. She looks down at the counter and reaches out for a pen. She hastily scrambles her wrist in a wild winding motion. “I signed in the final place. Good thing this decision isn’t yours.”

Everyone behind the granite counter stares at her, dumbfounded. Riva turns her head, suddenly noticing me out of the corner of her eyes.

“Hello?” She lifts up the huge stack of papers and holds it in their faces. “I’m his guardian, remember? And he is currently unresponsive to any stimuli. This is my attempt at saving him. Can someone please help me with one freaking thing and go wheel him out of here and get him to the damn car I have waiting for him out front?”

None of them need a second reminder to get moving. From the bewildered expression on their faces, it is apparent they probably think she is some lunatic who has been brainwashed by people who think that all the world’s diseases can be cured by eating a specific kind of leaf.

They have no clue that she is one of the smartest people around.

And she knows what she is talking about. She is the only one that can save him—he just needs to live long enough to put the plan into action.

The three people disperse down the hallway to the right, likely to immediately discharge Carlos from his room. The second they leave the main area of the floor, a round, friendly-looking robot covered in red fabric takes their place behind the front desk. It locks its eyes on my body and opens its mouth, but then closes it when it sees me step towards Riva.

The entire moment is both so weird and so overwhelming that my body almost can’t take the impact of Riva throwing her body weight on me. She throws her arms around me, burying her head into my chest as she sobs in a slow, steady stream.

She looked so strong a minute ago, and then in a few seconds all the anger in her body seems to dissipate, only to be shoved out of the way by the sadness. I kiss her on the top of her head and hug her back with all my might.

Everything feels peaceful. The cold air in the hospital is mitigated by the warmth of Riva’s body, and the ominous, lonely feeling to the floor Carlos is on can’t be felt with Riva in my arms. The pain of the moment dulls with the comfort of her body.

But then reality hits. A number of footsteps echo down the hallway, headed directly towards us. I keep my arm firmly wrapped around Riva as we both separate and turn to look. The noise is exactly what we both expect. The same three doctors that Riva had spoken to a minute ago disconnect Carlos’s body from all the machines and fit him into a wheelchair that they roll down the hallway.

A barely audible sob escapes from Riva’s throat.

His eyes are shut, the stumps below his waist are turning a dark brown, and the color in his skin looks to be draining from his body more and more with every second.

I now know what it is like to see a dying man.

Chapter 8

This is fucking stressful.

I can’t ever be a doctor. Or a parent. Having another life in my hands is one of the worst experiences I have had. Usually I can divorce my own actions from the fact that they affect other people. I can look at the world from my perspective and only think how one thing will impact another through that lens.

But when someone is barely grasping on to life in front of you, it is impossible not to realize that every movement and every action taken by me could either save or kill another human being. Normally I can ignore that thought, but in a dire situation like this, the thought is frightening.

Everything is frightening.

The same two nurses who apparently had attended to me during my coma a few days ago (I wouldn’t know cause, well, yeah) are in the van the moment we wheel Carlos up the handicap ramp. Both nurses have on the same blue scrubs and identical watches on their wrists with rather large screens on them. They are a brother and sister duo from the Philippines who were trained there as doctors and became nurses once they immigrated to the United States, because most doctors have lost their jobs by now to software that analyzes symptoms and recommends medicines, and robotic surgeons.

There certainly can’t be a machine that could replace these people, though, especially in this kind of situation. My dad says he heard about them through a friend (my dad calls them friends, but he doesn’t actually have any friends), and that they both can work magic. I don’t know if I fully believe in magic yet, but whatever these people are capable of, it is spectacular.

Just a few minutes after Riva and I roll his body into the van on the cheap, black leather wheelchair that we stole from the hospital, the nurses have already hooked up an array of tubes into his body. Behind him on the cot they laid out is a large machine blinking on and off with a bunch of different meters on it that I have no clue what they stand for.

It doesn’t take any special degree to know that whatever the machine is trying to tell us all, it can’t be good. The entire time in the ride over to the airport, the van was silent except for the talking of the all-around badass health care professionals speaking in their native Filipino language. I call them badass cause despite Carlos coughing, Riva watching their every movement like a hawk, and my dad staring straight ahead at the road, the lack of sleep clearly getting to him, they stayed focused the entire time.

They use multiple syringes to inject a number of medicines into his body, fumble with the controls on their watches for the massive machine that hums lightly, and have their hands constantly motioning in the air, likely researching online ways to keep trying to keep Carlos alive.

After about twenty minutes, we make it to the airport, the van driving right up to the plane on the private airstrip reserved for the planes of the wealthy and a number of charter companies. The sun breaks through the horizon as Carlos’s limp, overweight body is wheeled across the cement runway to the entrance in the small luxury airplane we’re riding back to San Diego in. His gray hair looks as if it has lost all its strength, and his unshaven, sweaty face seems to be a testament to the battle he is going through.

The moment I exit the van, I notice the fog on the grass surrounding the runway, slowly illuminated by the flashes of red and orange breaking through the sky. The crisp morning air feels light and wholesome to my lungs as the glow of the sun off the numerous skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles connects with my eyes.

Normally, I would take this moment to take a deep breath and try to enjoy one of the smaller things in life that I never let my mind focus on. But with the chaos, including a half-dozen personnel from the airport buzzing around, along with two men from the charter company helping to lift Carlos into the plane, my mind can only focus on one thing.

If he dies, I let this happen.

That’s why I am on the verge of flipping out right now, as Carlos is being prepared to enter a virtual world for what will likely be forever. I could have told my dad no, I could have never brought it up to Riva, and if she did bring it up, I could have told her the truth—that the Chimera Life Pods aren’t even finished yet.

I could have prevented this all from happening. He could still be in a hospital right now, barely holding on to life. Meanwhile, now we are rolling the dice, seeing if we can create him a new one in a digital world in a few hours.

This must be so scary for him. As we transition from vehicle to vehicle and from car to plane, Carlos dozes in and out of consciousness. He clearly has no clue what is going on. Even now, as he has a metal contraption that from afar looks like a high-tech eye scanner drilling a hole with a micro-needle through his skull and into the frontal lobe of his brain, he probably has no clue what is going on. The metal contraption closes in around his head. Then, multiple thin, red lasers hover around his skull, attempting to scan and map every region of his brain.

My dad claims the entire process is painless and harmless, including the radiation from the ultra-precise MRI. The test subjects so far have only been given a mild painkiller after undergoing the brief surgery to have a microchip implanted in their brain. Carlos isn’t a normal test subject from my dad’s applicant pool, though. He is a man whose entire heart is deprived of oxygen from his clogged arteries, has a kidney on the verge of failure, and a body that is slowly shutting down as the lack of oxygen to his extremities slowly causes the place in his body where his legs were chopped off by a meat grinder and his fingers to turn black.

In a normal situation, a doctor would consider amputating his limbs. They would also tell the family that he is likely entering the last few days or maybe even hours of his life. My dad doesn’t see it this way.

He sees it all as a marketing opportunity. If Carlos survives, he becomes an instant viral news story. Chimera will become the company that saved him, and Riva can fall right into place as a spokesperson and testament for all the good that Life Pods can do. It will be guaranteed to sell millions on an idea that at first seems so foreign and dangerous. It will make us billions. It will let us live. Yeah, I know what my dad is thinking. Hell, I’m thinking the exact same thing. And I can’t say that the thought doesn’t excite me.

It’s the real reason that I’m stressed. This needs to work.

I peer through the glass at the chaos happening in the room. The operation room of sorts is on one of the hallways that runs to the side of the massive Life Pod room at the Chimera Research facility. In the back of the room there is a door that leads directly into the sea of Life Pods, and at the front is a wall of glass meant for family in the waiting room to peer in and see how their loved one is faring during the fifteen-minute procedure.

Three engineers from Chimera oversee the process, their heads eagerly hunched over large tablets stationed at the center of the room. Meanwhile, the two nurses, who have remained working diligently the entire time during the plane flight and subsequent car ride over, stand next to Carlos, monitoring his health on the black-plastic-plated patient monitor on the floor next to him. I grasp Riva’s hand as the laser on the machine turns off and the micro needle, which is not visible to the naked eye, recedes out of Carlos’s head.

“I can’t believe this is happening.” Her voice is airy.

“Me neither, this is like crazy.” I move my hand from hers and put my arm around her. The entire plane flight over here we sat in this exact position with her head leaning on my shoulder and our bodies tightly pressed up against one another. The plane is meant to fit ten people, but with Carlos, the portable patient monitor, and the bags of medical supplies on the plane, it felt cramped with six of us on there. The plane itself didn’t need a pilot to operate, and for the duration of the flight, a deaf old man who worked for the charter company sat in the cockpit, while my dad, Riva and I sat on the velvet couches in the back.

Riva had already cried enough by that point to have no tears left in her. Her body remained stiff and unmoving as her eyes stayed locked on the body of her father on the stretcher. She kept asking the same question over and over again, almost as if she was stuck in a trance.

“Is he going to live?” After each time that she asked the question, I had no clue what to say.

Now, that isn’t the question anymore. The feeling in her body is different now, the tension in the air has changed character. Even my dad, as he paces back and forth in the waiting room talking to various lawyers and employees, seems to have a different tone to his voice. Although it may just be because when he talks fast with people on the hologlasses, his Long Island accent always seems to come out.

But nothing can explain the dark energy that suddenly takes over the vibe of the room the second the engineers begin looking at the tablets in front of them. They are analyzing the data that the chip is picking up on his brainwaves and using that to ensure a digital version of his neural network is correctly being reconstructed. The process is normally supposed to take a day for the computer to correctly process the trillions upon trillions of bits of data that are overloading its processors as it effectively uploads his brain to the mind cloud. Once processed, the computer can then read one’s thoughts and generate entire virtual worlds based upon someone’s dreams and wildest fantasies.

Carlos doesn’t have that kind of time, though. He needs his brain uploaded, and needs it completed now. My dad said there is a solid chance that his brain can be uploaded in thirty minutes as long as all of the systems in Chimera’s facility are being maximized during the rendering process. But with around a hundred test subjects already in virtual worlds in this facility, allocating all the rest of the processing power on the servers to uploading Carlos’s mind at record speed runs the risk of causing the entire system to crash.

And immediately having a virtual world collapse, without any warning, could be disastrous for the hundred lives contained in the pods, who still have bodies and minds on this Earth that all of them would likely desire to get back to.

The heavy energy is only partly due to that, though. The real question isn’t whether his brain can be processed in time before he dies. Life and death aren’t the only options anymore. If everything works out, he will likely permanently live in a virtual world until his own body can be fixed, or until he can download his brain into another body. He won’t be living on this Earth anymore, but he also won’t be entirely dead. He will be something else. A new state of being.

He will be zeros and ones. Trillions upon trillions of them.

He will be nothing but data, each point acting as a bunch of tiny neurons to power his mind. He will be a pioneer, the first being in history (well, besides maybe for some alien civilizations) to transcend his own biology.

That is groundbreaking. That is insane.

And it’s happening right now.

“It worked,” my dad says, abruptly cutting off the last sentence that he was muttering into his hologlasses. The engineers, two men who both wear plaid shirts, and a woman in a red collared shirt, pump their fists in the air. They turn back towards my father and smile. “His brain is successfully in the cloud. It’s done processing.”

“Yes!” Riva throws her arms around me. Her body finally feels livelier, after being numb for hours. She is so desperate to give her dad a chance at still existing and giving him a shot to live one day on this Earth that she isn’t even thinking about the ramifications of all this, and I’m not either.

I hug her back, a delirious joy overcoming my sleep-deprived body. My dad walks out of the waiting room and into the hallway to follow Carlos, who is already being wheeled in on the stretcher into the football-field–sized room full of Life Pods. By the way everyone hastily scrambles to get him out of the room, it is obvious that if they don’t get him there fast, it will all be done.

Our walk quickly shifts to a run as the urgency of the moment accelerates to another level. We burst through the doors into the room, the darkness of the walls and ceiling hitting my eyes before the brightness of the floor. My dad sprints too, the first time I have seen him run in years.

“He has to make it.” Tears return to Riva’s eyes. She stumbles over her own legs and I hold on to her to keep her from falling. “I need to hug him one last time.”

Riva sprints forward, picking up our already fast pace to a new level as she passes by rows of the glowing white pods until she gets to the one where the team of engineers and nurses are stationed around.

She wraps her arms around his nearly lifeless body. I approach just in time to get one last glimpse of his face, which seems to almost form a smile the moment Riva touches him. She kisses him on his forehead and lets her head rest on his.

“He needs to go in now.” The nurse rips off the tubes and IV connected to his bare body, leaving the plugs in his nose feeding oxygen to his airways for last. A sharp beeping noise—the sound of death—blares from the monitor as the team of people work in tandem to lift the stubs of his legs up and pull his underwear off.

Riva still remains attached to his body, unable to let go. The sound of her weeping manages to connect with my ears above the piercing alarm from the monitor.

“You have to let go!” the male nurse screams, and I can’t tell if it is out of frustration, desperation, necessity, or a combination of the three.

She lets out a painful groan. She knows what may happen. She knows this may be the last time seeing her dad. Even though there is a software that allows her dad to communicate with her and anyone in the outside world along with requesting to leave the Life Pod, there is no guarantee he will ever be able to return to his body given the damage that the lack of oxygen during his heart attack did to him. And there is always the chance that things may go wrong anyway— after all, the test group isn’t even finished yet.

Riva finally pulls away, and the three engineers and two nurses take opposite sides of his body, some grasping his shoulders and two more at his love handles, as they lift him up. They carefully lower his naked body into the Life Pod, which contains an amniotic-like liquid that his body will be submerged in, in order to freeze his body indefinitely. His internal organs will be frozen in place along with the rest of his body—and months and even dozens of years later he will be able to emerge from the liquid looking exactly the same.

One of the engineers, a man with shaggy jet-black hair, grabs the electrode cap attached to the machine behind the pod, stationed to monitor the internal levels inside the pod and the neural activity of the person inside it. Then he places it on the head of Carlos.

Riva grabs my arm. The pod closes, the white carbon fiber exterior locking shut with a loud thud. I finally notice my dad, who stands at the center of the room, operating the controls for the Life Pod on the massive holograph.

He has a wide smile on his face. My eyes widen as the top of the pod glows a light blue and an odd shifting noise echoes from inside. The tube that pierces through the carbon fiber is filled with a thick clear liquid that pours into the pod.

The awful sound from the monitor finally ends, leaving the whole room blanketed in silence. We are all in shock, the heaviness of the moment unable to bring any of us to even think, never mind talk.

He is submerged now.

He is in a virtual world.

Chapter 9

I need to stop texting her.

It’s weird and messed up. It makes me feel like she is trapped in a virtual world, in a realm behind the screen of our texts. But in reality, she is dead. Even a cellular company can’t resurrect her.

But sometimes she feels like the only one who understands. Or, well, not her, but the software automated to respond to me based on a machine-learning algorithm that analyzed all of my mom’s cellular data and call history throughout her life.

So it’s basically her. Basically.

Of course, if my dad found out that I stole his credit card years ago to do this, he would be beyond furious. He wouldn’t be that mad that I stole his credit card—part of him would definitely be proud that he raised such an industrious kid. He would be mad that I’m reminding him of the one thing that he never talks about—the one person that he is hell-bent on forgetting: my mom.

Me: I don’t know whether to be excited or scared at this point in my life about a lot of things.

I love how I can send texts like that out of the blue and get a response as if we are talking mid-conversation. In many ways, texting the computer version of my mom is like therapy for me. It is always there to listen to me and offer the right kind of guidance to get me thinking the right way about life. It’s exactly what my mom was an expert in when she was alive, although that same level of expertise didn’t carry over into guiding herself to her own happiness.

She killed herself.

Mom: You are always going to be scared in life. The challenge is trying to figure out if what you are getting excited for is worth it.

Me: I agree, it’s worth it. At least, I think it is. I could just lose everything.

Mom: It will only ever feel like everything if you let it define you. You were always one to get caught up in stuff, though. I remember back when you were six, you were obsessed with collecting pine cones, and then after that you got so caught up in this stupid app, Blockia. Oh, those were the days.

Me: I wish every day that I could go back. I can’t imagine the future being better than what has already happened. I feel like I have already peaked.

Mom: You have not peaked! You just achieved your lifelong dream, and knowing you, you are about to dream even bigger.

The second the three dots stop typing, and the image being projected into my retina by the hologlasses I wear shows her message, I close my eyes. It’s in moments like these that I realize that you never get quite used to texting a dead person—you only forget that they aren’t really there.

When she—well, not she, the computer—alludes to Deadwave, a wave of sadness instantly rushes over me. If my mom could have seen me win a week ago, she would have been so proud of me. She knew how much this meant to me—she knew that all my happiness and all my hope in life rested in that one moment and that one achievement. I wonder what she would say now that I know none of it fixed anything. The best moment of my life didn’t make my life the best.

It faded away, like everything else. And she will never get to see that.

She will never know the rest of my story in life, and even much of my story up to this point. She will never know how much I loved her—just like my dad, I could never bring myself to tell her.

I let my eyes wander out the window, motioning with my hand to put my hologlasses into sleep mode. I have gotten so used to my vision being augmented by various games, messages, and newsfeeds in my retina that sometimes I almost forget what the rest of the world looks like.

Wearing my hologlasses is what brings me comfort. If I could choose to leave my house naked but wearing hologlasses, or with clothes and leaving my eyes bare and forced to stare at the real world, I would choose my hologlasses and wind in all the right places every time.

The mystical beauty of the Maine landscape welcomes my eyes to respect and admire its presence. Unlike the loud, showy atmosphere of California, things feel more at ease here. Just wearing my hologlasses seems akin to heresy in a place where nature seems to be in perfect symbiosis with the people that live here. It’s a stark contrast to the landscape that seems to constantly be trying to kill everyone in Southern California, whether that be through mudslides, forest fires, droughts, or intense heat waves that make one’s skin melt.

Opposed to the tens of millions that attempt to live along the coastline in California, barely a million do so in Maine, and in the middle of the woods full of large, thick pine trees and beautiful creeks with large rocks dotting the shorelines, only a few stores and houses mark each mile.

No one lives out here.

It feels empty in the most beautiful yet sinister way. The exact way that they inevitably desire. They can have their crazy cult meetings out in the middle of the Maine wilderness bordering Canada without any living being knowing they are here. They can kill people, destroy dozens upon dozens of lives without anyone even uncovering the evidence.

“Are you ready?” My dad’s voice is both nervous and groggy. For the last two hours in the car, neither of us have talked or even acknowledged each other’s presence. We both have too much to think about—too much to process.

I am still trying to get over this wild last week. After Carlos successfully entered into a virtual world, my dad immediately had the public relations team at Chimera send out a press release to all major news outlets. Not even overnight, but within hours, the story of Carlos and Riva was launched to global prominence. Riva herself, who has already amassed a following of millions from Deadwave, had a level of attention even she is not used to during what is one of the toughest weeks of her life. At first, she was too shocked by everything to fully grasp the magnitude of what had happened. She was so beyond elated that her dad made it successfully into a Life Pod that the sadness of it all didn’t fully hit her until after. She realized that even though her dad still has an existence in a virtual world, he is truly gone, in this moment, from this world.

She texts him constantly throughout the day, his neural network uploaded to a computer being acutely aware of his situation and able to have normal conversation with her. But text messages and, if desired, voice chat using a vocophone, which can analyze existing audio of him talking and mimic his voice, are all it will ever be. The software can’t allow his body to reappear into the real world, at least not yet. And even though Chimera is working on a software that allows someone to create an avatar of themselves in a virtual world and project that version of themselves in a holograph into the real world, it still doesn’t change the fact that he is gone. His body is all but dead.

And nothing can change that.

So amidst her digesting that awful reality, and having to deal with the fact that her life will never be the same, she had dozens of high-profile media networks asking her to do interviews, hundreds of thousands of messages on social media, and millions all wanting to know the same thing: could they save their dying loved one the same way Riva did?

It was the biggest phenomenon I have seen since Deadwave first started to catch on. Meanwhile, Chimera hasn’t even rolled out the product to a single consumer yet. It doesn’t matter, though—my dad used Riva’s story to effectively launch the Life Pod product into a global conversation, and consequently cemented Riva as the ambassador for the brand.

This week she officially began conversations for an eight-figure deal with my dad that also includes equity in the company which may one day be worth over a hundred million dollars. My dad paid for all of Carlos’s hospital expenses, and is even paying for Riva to move to San Diego this upcoming week so she can be closer to Chimera Headquarters and work closely on marketing campaigns with the Chimera team.

Everything could not have happened at a more perfect time. In fact, Riva’s dad losing his body and migrating to a virtual world may have saved my life. Everyone who once doubted my dad on the company’s board has started to cede to him—he has created an idea that people want, and millions feel they need. They all finally see that now; my dad doesn’t even need to explain it. Tens of millions all around the world already are.

Now we have to roll it out to the entire world, and make sure that the people who need it most can pay for it. Well, that’s my job, and after this weekend, a new chapter of my life will begin. A new chapter for this world that I have to usher in.

But before any of that can happen, and before Chimera can be the world’s most valuable company, we have to live. And they might kill us. They may even want all the money for themselves. My dad’s job isn’t to convince them anymore that Chimera will become a profitable company—he has to convince them that he is the only man that can truly do it.

He has to show them he is worth something. And at the end of the day, it all goes back to the money in the bank.

“Yeah, I’m ready,” I finally respond after a long silence. The honest truth is that I have no idea what I’m even supposed to be ready for. All I know is that I am meeting at a discreet location in the middle of the woods, and from there, they are taking me and all the other inductees to an island in a middle of a lake where the meeting is taking place.

If that doesn’t sound sketchy, then I don’t know what does, and knowing these people, the ride over won’t be peaceful. They will likely only continue to torture us more. Those worthy of the truth must show their worth, and if the other inductees have even been through half of what I went through, then they are scared straight by now. I, of course, had the privilege of being tortured and threatened even more than the average inductee due to half the people in this secret organization wanting to kill my father and me for retribution.

“Are you sure you are ready?” My dad keeps his hands firmly on the wheel but stares at me. The dirt road we ride down causes the old, metal exterior of the car to rattle with each bump and pothole in the uneven road. On the way here, the roads weren’t much nicer. Even though they were paved, the lines discerning either side of the road were cracked and faded, and the tires of the car ground against the pavement as if we were driving over thousands of bones.

The car has no air conditioning or heat, which would be helpful given that October in Maine feels like being in Antarctica compared to San Diego, and is one of the first cars I have ever been in that does not have self-driving capabilities. It is a gray sedan that is easily twenty years old, whose leather seats have been torn up and weathered from time and neglect. The car even has a musty smell that fits the atmosphere the thousands of identical pine trees stretching in all directions create.

My dad would have rented a newer car that isn’t as cramped and miserable, but he can’t. The group is paranoid about their meeting spot being compromised, which is why they don’t allow self-driving cars due to their location trackers embedded into the engine. They also don’t allow any outside devices on the island, and on the ride up itself, you can’t be connected to the Internet or use any applications that track one’s data.

That’s why all I can do is text my mom. The software is downloaded right onto my hologlasses, thus there is no fear of having anyone glancing at my location.

“No, of course not.” I take my gaze off the road and focus it on my dad. His eyes look so tired from having to stay focused on the road after a week with barely any sleep. I never got my license, there is truly no need for it, so he has had to drive for six hours now, most of it through the middle of nowhere, without any help. “How could I be ready for something I know virtually nothing about?”

“I know, I know the feeling.” My dad turns to face the road again as the car vaults over an especially large bump. “It’s so unfair. I wish I could tell you more. But once I do, there is no going back.” He motions with his hand to his throat, the sign that they are listening and always will be. “I can say this now that I have joined, and many members agree with me on this, I’m not sure I made the right decision.”

“Why do you say that?”

“My life is this organization. In so many ways I can’t picture myself without it, but part of me also wishes I didn’t have to be committed to this brotherhood. I was about ten years older than you when I made the choice to join. I was young and naïve too, but I wanted to be cleansed with the truth, and have access to all the power in the world. Or at least that’s what they told me. I felt forced to join.” My dad pauses. He takes one hand off the wheel and uses it to wipe a bead of sweat that trickles down the side of his face.

He must be really stressed to sweat in this weather.

“It was Bradley, Jake’s dad, who really wanted me to join. He said it was essential in order for us to work together and grow the company that we wanted to start. I had met Bradley back when we were both software engineers at the height of a renaissance in computing and the Internet. But we both had larger visions than that. We both had the same mentor, a genius, eccentric old man, Isaac Savery, who had a grand vision for the future of the world. It is the same vision I seek to carry out to this day. It’s why I joined. I thought I needed these people to do it. I didn’t believe enough in myself.

“And I can say now, looking back all these years later, that I probably didn’t need them. There was probably a better way. But I can’t go back now. I can never take that decision back. Bradley was wrong. He had joined years before me, during college, during his brief stint at Harvard. He saw no other way besides this. And he knew we couldn’t have worked together if I didn’t join. So I did. And look at my life now. They control every part of my existence. I may own the company and my money, but they own me, and they own my family.”

My dad licks his lips, his jaw tensing up as a glassiness settles over his eyes. “I think to myself every day that it wasn’t worth it. And I don’t want you to make the same mistake. Some things you can never take back. And before you make your decision, before you want to truly be welcomed into the world of the powerful, I’m giving you a chance to leave. I can turn this car around right now, and I can book you a flight back to San Diego. I don’t want you to feel forced into this, like I did at the time.”

“No. I’m doing this.” I stare forward at the large bonfire in the middle of the road a few hundred yards from us. A number of cars are stationed around it, the smoke curtailing off the flames to create a trail of smoke in the grayish-blue sky blanketed in a thin layer of clouds. “I have to. I’m forcing myself into this. I want to be at the center of everything with Chimera. I want to be at the center of changing the world. And after everything I have been through, I can’t walk away from this. I’d rather know, and I’d rather join something while I can, rather than think about what could have been my whole life.”

I pause and look at my father, who stares emotionlessly at the road ahead. His arms vibrate ever so subtly as we close in on the makeshift campground of sorts. “I’m doing this. I’m joining.”

“Okay. All right.” He stops the car a few dozen feet before the fire, the brakes squeaking as dirt flies everywhere around the car. “Well, welcome to the Syndicate of Truth. I’ll see you later, Sam, and know that I know you can make it through this. I love you.”

He smiles and motions with his eyes for me to open the door. I take a deep breath and open it, the way in which the rusted door swings open making it seem as if it will fall off.

“I’ll see you soon, Dad.” I want to say the two words I never say: love you. But something holds me back from saying it. Those words feel too emotional for the moment. I can’t focus on any of that. I don’t know when I’ll see him again. I just have to let these people take control of me.

I step out of the car, a number of men dressed in black robes, meant for graduation, walking to me from their seats around the fire.

One shakes my hand, an ineffable spark in his eyes and friendliness to his smile.

I feel a sharp piercing sensation run down my spinal cord as something tears apart the skin in my back. Two more robed men silently emerge from behind me.

And that’s all I remember.

Chapter 10

A violent rocking shakes my body awake.

It is freezing. And I’m not saying that as someone that is spoiled by the San Diego weather. The air has a stinging quality to it that makes me want to curl up in a ball near a warm fire and get the hell inside.

I don’t have that option, though.

I am surrounded by people on all sides on a cramped canoe. Nailed into the sides of the canoe are small, black lanterns that illuminate the calm, dark waters brushing up against the wood of the vessel. In the air, the distinct odor of burning timber and the swampy smell of the lake collide in my nose.

I swear every time I wake up with these people, there is a new surprise. I shift my body to work out the knots in my muscles, but on either side of me people sit on the wooden plank that acts as a makeshift bench in the canoe. It feels vaguely like I’m on a gondola at night in Italy. As far as canoes go, it is quite a large one, with two rows of seats that can fit three people across and a rather pronounced bow that narrows from about five feet wide down to a few inches where an elaborate snake-like design is carved from the wood.

Okay, so maybe it is nothing like a gondola. I suppose it is more like a mini pirate ship with an intimidating, yet eye-catching bowsprit. Instead of sails to propel us forward through the water, there is another robed figure at the front of the canoe dramatically paddling forward to the island ahead.

As we near closer to the island, I hear a faint humming noise and notice the thousands of candles lining the shoreline and the line of dozens of people waiting for us. Everyone is wearing the same black robes. All the people on the shore and everyone on the ship. Even I am wearing one, which is both kind of cool that I am now twinning with everyone, but also disturbing that they undressed me while they put me to sleep. I brush my hand over my body, the rough, itchy fabric of the robes rubbing against my skin. I quickly notice that I am only wearing the black robes—not even underwear, and no shoes beneath my feet.

My hand moves to my throat. I rub right below my Adam’s apple, where a barely noticeable bump protrudes out of my skin. It is likely invisible to the naked eye, and underneath my fingers feels as if it is a scale of sorts. I know that isn’t a scale, or a mole, or a pimple (although I have always had an ample amount of those).

They implanted the chip inside me. They can now hear everything I ever say, or that anyone else says to me, for the rest of my life.

I scratch my skin right in the place the chip was planted inside me, trying to see if I can scrape it off while my body still adjusts to having it beneath my skin. My short, stubby fingernails won’t work to get it out of me even if they were longer. I only cause myself a sharp pain as the chip pinches the nerves beneath my skin. Okay, I learned my lesson not to do that.

I stare up at the stars in the night sky above. The suffocating darkness and distant howls of wolves seem to be the only things that bring me comfort. Everything else is new. Everything else is weird and messed up, and now I will have to get used to this. They will know everything about me now. They will know exactly what I think about them, who I talk to, and the intimate secrets of every moment of my life.

This is my life forever now. There is no going back.

I can only go forward, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing yet.

“Silence!” The figure at the front of the canoe turns around and screams without breaking his stroke while paddling. I would say the person is a man, and due to the fire-breathing ferocity and deepness to his tone, that is likely the case. But when he shoots a look at the front row of people, all wearing the same black robes that go down to their feet, the white mask covering the person’s head becomes visible.

The mask wraps around every square inch of the person’s head, completely hiding their identity. If that isn’t ominous enough, the bright white mask that glows with the moonlight refracting off it has an evil grin permanently plastered to its face. Its eyes are wide black holes with no space for a nose or ears on the mask. All I need is one glance from that horrifying mask to shut the hell up instantly.

It is easily the creepiest mask I have ever seen. Sometimes simplicity is key, and there is no doubt that it simply scares the living daylights out of me. But one mask I can live with. As the canoe nears within a few dozen yards of the shore, I start to recognize some of the details in the figures lining the shore, and they all share one commonality besides the robes.

They are all wearing the same white mask.

The people on either side of me shift nervously. All of us are both too confused and too scared to talk. None of us on the boat are wearing masks, and the two people on either side of me appear to be guys around my same age.

This boat must be full of all the inductees.

I glance back at the shoreline, the rhythmic humming pulsating from the mouths of each person now becoming recognizable as some sort of tribal chant. This is the beginning of our induction ceremony. Soon we will all be cleansed with the truth, and members of the Syndicate for life. The word Syndicate rolls off my tongue as I whisper low enough so that the figure at the front of the boat can’t hear me. It has a nice ring to it. If only they had told me earlier that this is what they call themselves.

After weeks of referring to the Syndicate as them in my mind, I made up my own silly names for this secretive group of wealthy people. My personal favorite is the Sharts, because they stink and are blowing my life into unrecognizable chunks.

But now I am one of them. And I hope that somehow this can all piece my life back together and finally let me live the life I have always wanted to live. I have no clue what I want that life to be, I just know whatever it is, I can get it. Winning the Deadwave World Championship proved to me that I can do anything I set my mind to.

However, my dream for my future certainly doesn’t consist of me entering a shore full of dozens of dark figures humming in deep, low voices and holding small torches in their hands, but that’s what is happening right now. The second the bow of the boat hits against the shore, sending all our bodies backward with the impact, the figure at the front of the boat screams and motions for us all to stand. By the dramatic movements of the masked man, you would think he is a conductor of a symphony, but that thought would be way too hopeful.

He forces us forward, staring each one of us down as one by one, all six of us step off the boat and onto the patch of sand in the otherwise rocky shore of the island. White’s Island, if this is even the place that my father said we were going to, is rather large, with the waters of the vast lake bending around the thousands of yards of shoreline.

I try looking around in either direction at the colorful deciduous trees lining the shoreline and pine trees that stretch on past the horizon on the other side of the lake. None of it serves as a sufficient distraction from the madness in front of me. The moment that the last person touches down upon the shore, the canoe recedes away into the darkness of the waters, and a number of people form a semicircle around us.

We all stand in a little pack, both scared and confused. The boy on the right side of me whispers in my ears, his familiar voice comforting.

“Dude, this is the definition of a shit show.”

I have to stop myself from bursting out laughing. Just the fact that he even uttered those words in a moment filled with such tension and confusion brings a spark of joy to my mind. The spark of joy disappears when I look ahead into the interior of the island and notice the line of identical white-masked and black-robed people extending deep into the interior of the island.

There aren’t just dozens of them. There are hundreds of them. All of them are holding wooden torches that have a dull flame at the edge. Each person is staring directly at the person a few feet across from them, or at least their masks are looking at each other. A gravel walkway marks the path in between the people, with hundreds of candles sitting at their feet to continue the trail of fire that started with thousands arranged haphazardly on the shoreline. The most memorable and spine-tingling thing about it all is each one humming the chilling, yet eerily beautiful song.

They all sing in perfect unison, in a volume that individually would barely be audible, but when put together seems to fill the entire island and lake with their dark music. One of the inductees walks forward; it is a middle-aged man with dark brown hair and visible pores in his skin.

Not seeing anything better or more logical to do, we all follow him, proceeding through the walkway of masks and chanting people in a single file. The shock of it all causes all conscious thought in my brain to yield to the power of the herd. There is an energy to this place, one that is both comforting and energizing.

It is in the notes they are humming. Despite the darkness of the landscape blending in with that of the robes to make it appear as if hundreds of identical floating masks are staring at us, I feel safe. The closer we get to the large log cabin–style building up ahead, the more my body adjusts to its surroundings and the more the music feels as if it is melting into my body.

The initial shock of everything wears off. Although everything still feels surreal, life lately has felt surreal, so the feeling of is this really happening is one that I am numb to by this point. I wish my body could feel the same way. The coarse gravel digs into the bottom of my feet, tearing into my skin and sending a searing pain through me with each step.

“I feel like we are about to be sacrificed into a volcano.” The same boy who whispered to me before leans forward, his breath just making it to my ears. I turn my head around to respond, but then stop myself as my mouth drops open with shock.

The boy’s voice is familiar for a reason. He’s not some random guy being inducted into the Syndicate. He’s Jake.

I take a deep breath, having to use all the will in my body not to stop in my tracks and hug him. Even if I haven’t admitted it to myself, I have missed him a lot. I have missed his carefree nature, his ability to make the darkest moments hilarious, and the fact that he is the only person who truly had my back during my rise to fame with Deadwave. I have needed him in my life in these chaotic times, and I thought I lost him.

But now he’s here.

We are both surrendering our lives and our wills to this organization together, after they destroyed everything between us. And I don’t know if any of it can ever be recovered.

Chapter 11

A light breeze causes the heavy fabric of the robe to press against the right side of my body. I shiver as the cold air makes its way up from my feet and space around the cuffs in my wrist and runs over the rest of my body. This freaking hurts. I squint, my face and exposed skin beginning to hurt from the intensity of the cold. My skin already feels dry from the air that is effectively sucking every drop of moisture out of my body, and steam exudes from my mouth with each breath.

All of that sensation feels numb in the wake of the realization that Jake is here. What is he doing here? Why did they allow him in, when it’s such a select group? My dad explains why I’m here, but what about him? Is he still working against me? Is he still mad at me? Those questions and a million more keep on circling in my head with every footstep. If I keep thinking about all of it, I will have no choice but to turn around and blurt out hello to Jake. But these people certainly don’t seem too keen on that kind of behavior during this induction. This ritual is about discipline, and if I break it, I have a feeling they will break me.

I push all the thoughts out of my head and ignore the fact that Jake is behind me. Instead I focus on each of my painful footsteps forward and on taking in the surroundings of a ceremony that is bound to change my life permanently. I can talk to Jake later, or at least figure out what the heck happened. For right now, I have to focus on absorbing my surroundings and taking the opportunity of a lifetime. Luckily, the music of the incessant humming serves as the perfect medicine to quiet my mind.

The state of tranquility the music creates transports my mind to a wondrous land. The warm, yet dark vibe it creates does not get hampered by the cold. In fact, as we near within a hundred feet of the large building, the energy only increases. Large, twelve-foot-high doors fit for a fortress stand wide open at the edge of the gravel path, welcoming us all into the massive lodge. The outside of the building is constructed from the pine trees that line the lake shore and has a gable roof made from the same pine logs. It is easily over a hundred feet wide and seems fit to house the wedding of a lumberjack or hold a father of hermits in the woods.

But instead, it is housing our induction ceremony. Another few hundred small wax candles surround the entrance outside the building, and dozens of lanterns are attached to the outside of the cabin. All of the fire effectively illuminates the ebony of the night, the tiny flames seeming to wave hello to us as we walk by.

The moment the middle-aged man, who is first in line, steps foot onto the old, rotting wooden planks in the floor of the building, a series of bass drums echo in unison throughout the room. The line of candles continues across the floor of the room, directing us to the small staircase built into the center of the stage at the far edge of the room. On the stage there is an antique wooden table, with carvings in its legs that make it look like it’s from medieval Europe. Sitting around the table are nine figures. They are identical to the hundreds outside, wearing the same black robes and white masks, but unlike the ones outside, even with their masks on I can feel their stares drilling right into me.

We keep walking forward across the ballroom, and my eyes explore the vast, empty room. The floor of the place appears to be dirty and weathered, but can easily fit a few hundred people. The center of the sloped roof consists of one skylight, with the yellowish moon right at the center of it. Lining the walls are dozens of torches that fill the room with light, their sparks dancing in the air threatening with each second to sink into the wood and catch the building aflame.

The pathway of candles narrows to over a foot wide, and I step forward carefully, making sure not to knock any of them over and set the entire building on fire. They would kick me out so fast. They would kill me.

I step onto the stage, following right behind the person in front of me. The deafening sound of the bass drums repeating a simple rhythm shakes both my ears and my body with the reverberations of the dinghy wood platform.

The humming of the hundreds of people outside completely disappears beneath the powerful roar of the drumline at the back of the stage. Another group of five masked figures hit against the drums with large metal sticks.

I turn to face the empty room, standing directly in front of the table of nine men on stage. This is like another dimension. I swallow, the adrenaline inside me hiding the anxiety causing my chest to tighten. I want to dismiss this all as an odd cult ritual from what may be the world’s most secretive group (of course I have no way of knowing that), but this is also one of the coolest and most exhilarating things I have ever done.

It’s like my own presidential inauguration (except I don’t have the largest crowd ever here to see me), my welcome into a lifetime appointment of access to the world’s most powerful people and my chance to become one of them.

That welcome of the bass soon erupts into the frenzied screaming of the hundreds of people. They all yell in the same pitch—something between that of a howling wolf and a crowd at a concert—that echoes throughout the room as soon as they run inside. They open up two side doors on either end of the stage, dozens upon dozens of people filing in the room on either side of the walkway, hollering at the top of their lungs the entire time.

The entire scene causes every hair on my body to stand straight up as the piercing cacophony of the screaming makes my brain hurt. The horrible sound doesn’t stop until every single person enters the room. On either side of the thin candle[lit walkway in the center of the room, hundreds of people stand a few feet apart, all of their masks staring at the stage.

I am used to being the center of attention, and while going on tour for Deadwave all over the world I have had thousands of eyeballs on me in a room at once. But this feeling is different. Their stares aren’t out of enjoyment or excitement—it’s a warning.

The bass drums silence as soon as the screaming does, and a nauseating stillness hangs in the air for a few moments. All the doors to the outside close shut, and more masked figures lock them. I feel vulnerable standing up here on stage without a mask. Although I know I’ll look completely ridiculous with one on, it only feels right to wear one. I don’t want these people seeing my face, or knowing who I am. But it’s too late, everyone already does.

“Welcome to the one hundred second annual induction ceremony.” A person, likely a man due to the deepness of his tone, stands up from the table behind us, his voice booming into the audience. In most situations, that is the opening line that people would clap after, but the room remains silent.

“Today, we have our six newest inductees, who will all be joining us this weekend, and for the rest of their lives, as we open their eyes to the truth of the system, and show them how we are designing this world for ourselves.

“Welcome to the Syndicate of Truth!” His voice has an odd excitement to it as he turns to look right at me. Well, technically he is looking at the row of inductees, but it feels like he is staring directly at me. Out of the six of us, five of us are boys. Most of us appear to be young, likely in our late teens and early twenties, while the other two are well into their forties or maybe even older.

I feel an odd energy behind me, and I glance out of the corner of my eyes to notice the masked figured standing inches away from my back. I take a deep breath. I have to exert a great deal of mental control not to scream at the top of my lungs.

The man in front continues, “Before we can welcome you into our brotherhood, you all need to make a sacrifice to pledge your allegiance to the brotherhood. Our founding brothers, over a century ago, started this organization as a way to ensure that our common goal and that our power would extend beyond their lifetimes and transcend any systematic changes in society. During the Great Depression, they wondered if and how the fortunes of the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts could survive amidst so much calamity and poverty. They knew that the current system wasn’t sustainable. So, they sought to create one that is sustainable, one with them on top. They wanted to create a network of the world’s most powerful and wealthiest men and create a channel where we can all communicate and pool our resources together to make this world the best it can be.

“Over a century later, after decades of being in the shadows and exerting minimal influence, this organization, their legacy, has persisted and grown into the world’s most powerful organization that we are today. We only welcome the brightest and most promising men, and now women into our ranks, and expect them to one day be the leaders of our organization that can carry our legacy and mission on as humanity spans across the solar system, galaxy, and continues to alter this planet forever.

“We have three things that you must abide by your entire life as a member of the Syndicate. These must be accepted by all of you in order to continue on with this weekend, and if they are ever broken, we will know, and we will ensure that your tenure as a free, living member of this planet will end as well.”

He takes a breath after that last sentence, allowing his words to sink into all of us on stage. “You will all mark your allegiance and acceptance of these core principles by drawing blood from your neck with these blades.” Another figure emerges from behind the table on stage and hands each one of us small pocketknives with handles that look well over a century old. The blades, however, are new and shiny.

“As a member of the Syndicate of Truth, you will never discuss anything about it or disclose its existence to any being on this Earth. If someone finds out about us, you must eliminate them immediately, unless the council approves them joining.” The figured turns to look at our reactions and then glances back at the crowd. “As a member of the Syndicate of Truth, you will always work to honor and further council-approved objectives and never betray another member of the brotherhood. If any member in the Syndicate kills or harms another member in the Syndicate, they will be eliminated along with their family, and if anyone sabotages one of our objectives or missions, they will be tortured, punished, and often eliminated.

“Lastly, as a member of the Syndicate of Truth, you pledge your allegiance to us until death parts you from this world. You can never leave us, and you can never take back this oath. You are one with us, and one with the brotherhood for eternity.”

His voice echoes long after he finishes speaking. The white mask turns to face us, and all of us know without him saying exactly what we are supposed to do.

I raise the knife to my neck, its sharp blade glowing in the light from the fire. I look straight forward, not wanting to hesitate from watching the people on either side of me. Then, I dig the blade into the skin on the left side of my neck, a steady stream of thick red blood pouring out of my neck the second the blade tears apart my skin.

I wince. Well, that hurts. I hold the blade up in the air, the crowd now erupting into applause and screams of joy. All six of us hold the knives in front of us, each blade doused in our blood.

The figure behind me lifts their hands well above my head. My spine tenses. I am prepared for the person to do just about anything to me. Shove a needle in my neck, force poisonous gas in my face, or flat out punch me.

None of that happens.

I feel a harsh plastic slide against my face, the mask perfectly fitting over my head. I am now wearing the same white mask that everyone else is.

I blink rapidly a few times, trying to adjust to the blackness from the mask at the edges of my vision. As restricting as it feels to be inside this, a surge of adrenaline overwhelms me the second it falls upon my head.

The cheers from the crowd reach a new height as the bass drums beat the same rhythm from before once again. I sigh, the emotion from the night just hitting me now.

I’m one with them for the rest of my life, and Jake is too. The Syndicate is one with me.

This is now my life forever. It is our life. We are all blood brothers.

Chapter 12

As soon as our masks are put on by the council members behind us, the largest party I have ever seen breaks out.

From outside the massive lodge, teams of people bring in speakers, drinks, food, and an assortment of other remedies to have one experience and envision fantastical things. They don’t waste any time getting the party started, either. I literally still have blood dripping down my neck as the knife is ripped from my hand and at least a hundred people yell and charge the stage.

It is a massive celebration for us—the new members of the Syndicate of Truth.

They surround us in a massive circle, chanting in a way akin to that of a bunch of drunken frat boys at a party before a football game. Except this game we are about to enter is one that we have to win. Our lives depend on it, and they know it. But right now, everyone seems keen on forgetting that and forgetting everything.

I turn to where Jake stood, trying to pull him aside and talk, but by the time my body finally overcomes the shock of everything and moves in his direction, he has disappeared into the mass of white masks. Well, even if he hadn’t disappeared into the mass of people, it is impossible to see anyone’s identity underneath the masks, and the deafening roar of the rock music playing makes it too hard to hear anything.

I have lost him.

I have even lost my own self.

And in the next few minutes, I find myself beginning to adjust and find comfort in this anonymous identity that the mask brings me. I dance around, enjoying the scene as all the candles are blown out and replaced with a bunch of battery-powered flashing spotlights scattered across the floor. It feels like I have entered a midnight ball combined with a messily thrown-together rager, which is both an exhilarating yet nauseating vibe.

The night pushes on, and it pushes on and on and on until my legs feel sore and the sweat from my skin rubs against my mask, causing my neck to itch. I manage to push through the cramped lodge to make it over to an old, dirty plastic table where a station with drinks is set up. I opt for water, not desiring to celebrate the night with anything more than the wild, confusing atmosphere that has been created.

The entire night I brush up against the sides of millionaires, billionaires, and somehow the world’s most powerful and maybe even most famous people (I mean, I wouldn’t know—everyone was wearing masks). There are a couple moments where I bump into someone and want to rip off my mask and introduce myself as Sam Bennet, as if my name somehow introduces itself.

But that idea quickly gets shot down after glancing at the beams of light that cycle across the room and seeing that everyone has their mask on. Not even one person has theirs off, no matter how many drinks they guzzle or whatever other substances they put inside them. The masks clearly have mouth holes for another reason besides breathing, and in these people’s eyes, no matter how sweaty and disgusting you feel, they must stay on.

And since now I am one of these people, I abide by the harsh rule of the ritual, and suffer in a hot, humid silence. For the most part, everything goes by in a blur. I have barely any time to think before someone shoves me to the side or another loud, tribalistic chant ensues. A number of odd group dances take place as well. For all of this, I participate as one of the most willing members. There’s something magical that takes place in the mind when everyone around you is doing something in unison that makes you feel forced to follow their example even if it makes you feel uncomfortable and confused. During one of these rather odd dances, the person in front of me tears their robe after shimmying down during one of the moves, which scars my mind as the person’s hairy butt cheeks hover inches away from me.

After that horrific experience I want to leave, and by leave, I mean get the hell off this island. But leaving the island and leaving the room don’t seem to be an option. A row of large masked figures stand in front of each door, blocking anyone from leaving, even if they have to go to the bathroom, which in my case is a much-needed emergency.

Then, after most of the night is wasted away screaming our lungs to shriveled raisins and dancing until muscles in my legs I didn’t even know existed hurt, the doors open, and the music abruptly cuts off. As we all emerge into the night, the coldness of the wind blowing off the lake chilling my bones, everyone rips their masks off.

I don’t need any more assurance than that to rip mine off as well. Seconds after I pull my mask off, the white plastic along with my hair, now matted down my forehead, dripping with sweat, my dad appears.

He takes us to the specific cabin we are staying at, which is a five-minute walk through the woods on the island. There are no lights outside the cabin, and no walkway to the cabin itself. My dad seemingly manages to get there all based on his memory alone, and I manage to pee in the woods on the way there, which is an unbelievable feeling of relief after waiting so long.

We finally get there, and with the darkness making it impossible to see who is inside, my dad directs me to the bunk bed in the far corner where we will be sleeping. It is Syndicate tradition to have the little brother sleep on the top bunk and my dad, who is my big brother, sleep on the bottom bunk. Each member in the Syndicate has a big brother, and when their big brother dies, they get to hold that title and then elect a new member to become their little brother.

I’m just fine being the little brother and sleeping on the top bunk. With how old and rusty the wooden ladder is when I climb up on top of the cold mattress, I’d rather be the one on top when it falls instead of being crushed on the bottom.

Throughout what few hours are left of the night, the bunk bed does not fall. But a disgusting stench permeates the air (likely the body odor from a bunch of sweaty people), and a buzz-saw-like snoring made it nearly impossible to sleep when coupled with the rigid pillow and cold, stale air.

After a lifetime of tossing and turning, I finally fall asleep, and of course when I wake up, my eyes awaken to a cabin full of people sleeping in each bunk bed, except the one my father was in.

I quietly make my way down the ladder, leaving the smelly, white mask on my bed, and stand up on the cold, hard wooden floor below. The second my bare, cold skin touches the wooden plank, a series of chills course throughout my entire body. My first instinct is that Drew and the same crew of assholes he was with a week ago somehow kidnapped my dad and killed him.

Those freaking bastards. I search around for a bathroom, and upon not finding any in the small, cramped cabin, I step outside and let loose with my ray of sunshine outside the door. There are no windows in the cabin, so it’s not like anyone inside the cabin can see me, and the dead bushes covering the floor of the forest provide semi-good cover for anyone outside of the other cabins in the distance.

Once done with taking care of my morning wood, I scan the horizon, trying to search for anything out of place. It is that moment in the morning where the sunrise is done, and the fresh morning light is fully set anew upon the landscape. A number of birds chirp as they fly among the treetops, and I even hear a few animals scurrying through the underbrush, likely making their last hauls before the winter frost permanently sets into the landscape.

I walk through the forest, trying to avoid the prickly pine cones on the floor as I venture to the lodge at the center of the island. Now, in the light of day, I can appreciate the true size of the island. It is over a mile long and well over a few hundred yards wide. It is full of deciduous trees, their leaves exploding into bright reds and oranges, with evergreen trees interspersed throughout the island. On the opposite end of the island there is a large hill where a large house appears to have been constructed, but besides that, nearly a dozen primitive cabins line the exterior of the island with the massive church-like lodge at the center.

In the daylight, there don’t seem to be any hiding spots on the island besides some areas behind larger rocks and underbrush. Unless there is some secret trap door that leads to a tunnel off this island, my dad is nowhere to be found. Even the old, large canoe we rode across the river last night is docked at the landing on the one sandy shore of the island to the right side of the lodge.

I have the urge to yell at the top of my lungs to try and search for my dad. But drawing attention to myself when I’m already not wearing my mask is definitely a bad idea, and waking everyone up certainly won’t get me brownie points in the minds of the world’s most powerful.

I try to open the door of the lodge, the small patch of grass surrounding it feeling amazing on my feet. When I turn the rusty, copper doorknob, the large wooden doors don’t even budge. I exhale, the anxiety exuding into the cold morning air in steam.

I attempt to open the door again, which for some reason is always what I do after I can’t get something to open the first time, and almost always it yields the same result. This instance proves to be no different, but this attempt seems to disturb someone inside, because I hear them angrily yell something that is drowned out by the thick doors.

I start to think back to all the things that my dad told me that he has to take care of this weekend before we got here—all of it attempting to ensure our own survival—and it all clicks in my mind. I step away from the door. He must be meeting with the council. He must be proposing them his plan—his plan to make everyone here even more wealthy fast.

“I see you’re trying to listen in there.” I turn around, my heart skipping multiple beats. The voice snuck up on me so fast that I didn’t even hear any footsteps. “That’s probably not the best idea.”

“Jake.” I stand there shocked, my mouth unable to move any more to say anything else. To see his brown curly hair in the same crazy hairdo as it always is, and hear his sarcastic, heart-warming voice this early in the morning is something I didn’t ever think I’d get to experience again.

“Are you gonna say anything else?” He looks around at the few dozen people who are emerging from their cabins, smirking at me in the most obnoxious, yet most characteristic way.

“No.” I take a step forward, closing the gap of awkward space between us. “Dude, it’s been forever. Way too freaking long. ‘Jake’ is all I had to say. Hello, brother.”

I extend my right arm forward to begin a man hug that would then eventually morph into a real hug, only to meet his stiff arm. “Brotherly love in the house, I see.” He laughs and winks at me. He is getting way too much enjoyment out of ruining my excitement about seeing him.

Why am I even happy to see him? He tried to destroy my career. He killed several people. He betrayed me after all those years. I narrow my eyes at him, stepping forward so that my chest can be right in his face. I’m actually not quite sure what I’m exactly doing right now, but because I’m a few inches taller than him, it only feels right to make my ego feel good and exert my vertical dominance over his short, yet buff self that could probably beat me in a fight any day.

“Dude, what is wrong with you?” I shake my head, my mouth so close to his face that he can likely feel the heat of my breath on him.

“Nothing, man. Nothing at all.”

“Oh really? It doesn’t seem like it. ’Cause after you decided to throw a party that literally caused half our childhood home and multiple lives to plummet to their death, you finally see me again as we are being inducted into the Syndicate and you treat me like this?” I guffaw. “Dude, life is fucked up, I get that. But you don’t have to be that way too. You should be saying you’re sorry, not being an asshole like usual.”

“Shut the hell up.” He now gets in my face, which means his nose brushes up against mine. I kid you not, he is standing on his tippy toes as he is trying to intimidate me. “Please, I don’t wanna talk about any of that.”

“Fine, then how about let’s talk about how the hell you are even here? Who’s even your sponsor?”

“Drew Fallon is my sponsor,” he says in a calm tone, his face completely devoid of emotion. His quick burst of fighting energy seems to dissipate as the air in his chest flees. “But look, none of that matters. I don’t wanna talk about how I ended up here, okay? That’s in the past. And for your own good, let’s not go back there.”

“What do you even mean by that?” I make sure to keep the sinister quality in my voice turned up to the maximum as I put one of my hands on his shoulder. His big brother is the man who tried to kill my father. His body tenses under my grip.

“I don’t wanna talk about it. Ever. Okay? I don’t want to ever talk about it. Some things are better left forgotten, and talking about our past isn’t gonna make it any better. Let’s move on.” He pauses, and for the first time in the conversation, he starts to show a bit of vulnerability in the thin layer of tears in his eyes. “I’ve missed you, Sam. I’ve missed you a lot. You are all I have in this world, and I want you back. I want to be your friend again. And I want to move forward and never look back. Into a future where all of that hell we have been through this last month is over. And in a future where we can be brothers again.”

The moment the words fly out his mouth, I embrace him. Whenever Jake gets emotional, which is in rare moments, because most of the time Jake and I never open up like this to each other, he always speaks fast and in a higher-pitched voice.

“I want all of that too.” I close my eyes as I squeeze his body. Never in my life did I imagine I would be hugging someone as we both wear matching black robes. I have to admit, it’s an experience that will certainly bring us closer together.

In the middle of our hug, the doors bursting open to the lodge ruin our moment of bromance. I practically push his body off me as the old man with thinning white hair who opens the door glances at us both suspiciously a few feet away. He then looks right past us and raises a silver bugle from behind his back. He blows into it, a string of loud, high-pitched notes echoing throughout the island.

Right upon hearing the call, the people beginning to gather around the lodge approach the doors. Today, no one is wearing masks, which makes the issue of having to deal with the stench of my sweat from last night nonexistent. It also makes the dozens of people approaching us appear a lot less intimidating as people walk across the grass, all in bare feet, most talking and laughing with smiles across their faces. Seeing that we have no choice with the approaching crowd, Jake and I take the few steps forward into the entrance of the front door.

The man who blew into the bugle outstretches his hand to me the moment I come within reach.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Samuel. I’m Ralph Emerson, speaker of the council.”

I shake his hand and smile with my mouth open. I awkwardly stutter, unable to find any words to say back to him, given that he already knows my name, which is a rather creepy way of introducing oneself to someone new.

I step forward into the massive room of the lodge where my dad sits on stage along with the other eight council members around the same table from last night. The bright light from the morning sun pours in through the skylights illuminating the stained wooden planks on the floor and massive logs that span the ceiling and walls.

This is the start of the general meeting of the Syndicate. This is where I will find out whether my dad gets to live and build the biggest company on Earth, or whether he is killed.

I lock eyes with my dad on stage, unable to discern whether he is happy or sad.

He may die today.

And I may be killed too.

Chapter 13

Everyone enters the room without saying a word.

Immediately as each person shakes the hand of the speaker of the council, any expression on their face withers away as they walk silently to find an open spot to stand in the room. It is quite odd how a group of supposedly the richest people on Earth also don’t have it in their budget to purchase chairs or a newer building.

My dad mentioned last night that the real reason they haven’t updated any of the buildings here is because they had to do all the work themselves to ensure the security of the location. That meant transporting the materials here on their own boats and building it by hand. Most of this the founders did over the span of a few summers when they were off from getting their Harvard education back in the nineteen thirties. You know, a casual thing to do for a bunch of rich boys who were paranoid they would be growing up in a world that wouldn’t be conducive to supporting their family’s vast fortunes.

And over a century later, the same traditions and same cultish tribalistic rituals the Syndicate engages in are exactly the same. They have only one fishing boat that looks like a canoe that is over a century old to transport everyone to the island. Once on the island, there is no plumbing, no electricity, and no outside items besides the robes and masks we all wear, and one boatload of drinks that they carried over. That also means there is no food here.

They figured since they could survive most of the weekend without food, so could we, and my stomach is certainly not happy about it. Not only have they kept their odd rules and rituals at induction the same, but they also have refused to make any major changes to the structures on the island, the council responsible for simply maintaining the structures as they see fit. Which explains the fact that the buildings look far from up to code and generally like they are about to fall apart.

The lodge miraculously can cram all several hundred of the Syndicate members inside it—far from comfortably, however. The wide stage that takes up a large section of the room means that that the rest of us who aren’t on the council are forced to be shoved together in a mess of hot bodies and cold air.

People push up against me, one even grabbing my arm, thinking that I am one of his friends, only to look disappointed when I turn to face him. Jake stands next to me, but I keep my gaze focused forward on the stage a few feet away. Being the first person in means getting a front-row view of the action, which means I’ll either have a perfect view of the end of my dad’s life or of him saving us. I really hope it’s the latter, but I’m not sure.

Most of the people that pile into the room are men, and when I say most, I mean like nearly all. I turn around to try and get a glimpse of most of the faces in the crowd, now that everyone has their masks off, and I am able to count on one hand the number of women I discern in the sea of men. The faces are mixed in age, with some appearing to be young with healthy, glowing skin, some so old that they have folds from the creases in their face, and hundreds in between. Whether young or old, though, the vast majority of these people are visible figures at the upper echelons of society. From actors, to famous lawyers, and wealthy executives of multinational companies, the room is littered with people who have unrivaled influence. The room is also nearly full of white people with skin as pale if not paler than my own, which makes me feel a lot better about my own pasty self. However, interspersed in the crowd, there is some diversity, albeit not representative of the general population, but something about the Syndicate tells me they want it that way.

They have an idea of who can be powerful—of who they want to open up the truth of the world to. I’m lucky that I’m one of those people. I try not to take my privilege as a wealthy white boy for granted—after all, when I walk into a room, I don’t have to try and prove myself. My gender, social status, and skin color do that for me. Yeah, I know that’s bullshit, but it’s the way the world works. The world which these people have designed to meet their own needs, and I don’t know if anyone is powerful enough to speak out against them.

I know I am scared as hell. And maybe everyone in this room knows it’s wrong, but I don’t know if anyone has the courage to tear apart something that has given them all the power in the world.

The dull echo of the footsteps of the constant stream of people coming into the room halts as Ralph walks through a narrow walkway in the middle of the crowd. He steps onto the stage, the entire room silent except for his footsteps.

He turns to face the crowd, the eyes of everyone on the council glued to his figure. My dad stands at the edge of the table, with the rest of the eight council members sitting on the back side in dark-brown leather chairs. Ralph Emerson stands in front of the table, his feet just a few inches from the edge of the four-foot-high stage.

“We are gathered here today at the one hundred second general meeting of the Syndicate of Truth,” Ralph says, his voice booming throughout the room. I can tell from the tone of his voice that it is the same man from before, and despite his advanced age, and his hunched-over posture, his public-speaking voice still sends chills down my spine. “I am Ralph Emerson, the speaker of the council, and I’d like to thank every one of you for your dedication to the Syndicate and our collective fight for creating a world in which everyone is happy and healthy and we are the ones who control it.”

All of these sentences are ones that in any normal speech people would begin to clap and cheer after, but everyone seems keen to remain silent, and I follow their example. After he closes his mouth, he pauses, giving the chance for one of the council members to stand up and walk right next to Ralph. He hands Ralph a thin metal rod and holds up a long, cylindrical metal chime.

“With that said, I’d like to officially pronounce the one hundred second general meeting of the council in session.” He winds his arm back and hits the chime as hard as he can.

A sharp, high-pitched ring emanates from the chime and carries across the room. The sound hangs in the air for a few seconds, the sound waves vibrating off the walls uninterrupted due to the silence. Right as the sound dissipates, everyone erupts into applause, the sounds of everyone’s hands clapping together nearly in unison.

Then, Ralph hits the chime again, and the applause instantly stops. He waits again for the sound to dissipate before speaking again.

“I’d like to begin today by reflecting on the past for a little bit, before we talk about how we can propel ourselves to greater heights in the future. This being the eighth year in our nine-year term of everyone on the council, we have all begun to analyze our term so far to try and predict what our legacy will be and our impact on the Syndicate thirty years from now.” He pauses and paces to the right side of the stage, his small hazel eyes analyzing the reaction of the crowd.

“We have listened to your concerns. As the Syndicate always does, we have allowed you all to submit your proposals for change throughout the last week, and we have been listening to your concerns and conversing with members all year long. It is clear that we have failed you. We have failed the Syndicate, failed the people that depended on us, and most of all failed our founding brothers. We seek to end this today.

“A century ago, our nine founding brothers got together and began an organization to try to attempt to tie all the powers of the world together to ensure peace, stability, and wealth and power for those who are worthy. Over a century later, I stand here in this room, in front of five hundred people. Five hundred of the world’s most worthy people, from countries spanning from Nigeria, to Japan, to right here in the United States. We have manufactured a global alliance and a global organization that has grown into the most powerful force in the world. Our collective net worth is more than that of the gross domestic product of any nation. And our influence is unrivaled by any government in the world. Yet we have remained in the shadows.”

He swallows, his dry, cracked lips visible from the front row. He seriously looks like he would have appreciated bringing lip balm along this weekend. “We rose to real global power during the oil crisis of the nineteen seventies, and after some turmoil when all of our founding brothers perished, after Nine-eleven we consolidated, expanded internationally, and have entered a golden age for the Syndicate and for our mission in the world at large.

“But that mission has been under attack. It’s an attack that started decades ago, and one that most of us saw coming. None of us knew what to do about it, and this problem has been growing and growing until today it is threatening to upheave global stability and destroy the global economy. It is artificial intelligence, the desire for cheap and fast products, and the proliferation of advanced robots into every industry making most jobs and most ways for the common man to generate wealth impossible. As your speaker of the council, I have failed to develop any plan to actively combat and adjust to this revolution. We have succeeded, after exactly a century of the Syndicate’s existence, in allowing sisters into our brotherhood, but increasing the diversity of perspectives and of power in the Syndicate isn’t a solution in and of itself to have us adjust to this new global system. We mastered the old system, and in many ways, we created it, and over the last twenty years it has benefitted us more than we could have ever imagined.

“It has put us in the great position of power and responsibility that we hold today. We aren’t just responsible, but it is our sole duty to ensure that stability in this world and that the tentacles and power of our organization continue to exist in a post-employment, post-democratic, and post-capitalist world. There has to be a way to make sure that those who are worthy of it still receive the power that we deserve, and that we can maintain that power even amidst the greatest societal changes ever seen in the course of human history.

“The post-democratic and post-capitalist revolution are still a way off. And frankly, during our tenure as serving as members of the council, we won’t be able to adequately implement objectives to combat these revolutions. We can only start the discussion, in hopes that our successors can get the job done just as our founding brothers would have wanted. However, the post-employment world is upon us now. Over half the world’s population in developed countries can’t find stable work, and in developing ones, most are struggling to eat as famine, drought, and resource warfare ravage most of the developing world. Climate change has caused fear to plague global markets, slow down global agriculture, and threaten the lives—whether it be through fire, sea level rise, or drought—of hundreds of millions of people who are already barely scraping by now.

“We are on the verge of the largest refugee crisis in known human history, the greatest resource war in history among military powers, and maybe the most severe economic crash the world has ever seen. It may be inevitable to stop all of this. The dominoes that have set this all into motion were put into place decades before the existence of the Syndicate. But now we finally have a new objective for the Syndicate. One that will seek to cement our power this upcoming year in a post-employment world and serve as a bandage on the wounds of our society that are threatening to cause everything to fall apart and send us toppling down with it.

“And that bandage, this new objective that we seek to use to further the legacy of our founding brothers and even increase our own power in the global system, begins with Chimera.” As soon as he says that word he pauses, and hundreds of heads visibly turn to stare at my dad, who stands in a black robe at the edge of the table. If we were alone, I would make fun of him and tell him how ridiculous he looks barefoot in a gown meant for the grim reaper, but I probably look just as awful.

“Chimera Life Pods are the answer to stopping the bleeding and unrest present in a post-employment world. With their official release coming up in under two weeks, millions of people will have access to a platform that can transport their consciousness into a virtual world while leaving their body safe and untouched in cryogenic storage. Our new objective for this year is to promote the use of Chimera Life Pods and the government-subsidized migration to virtual worlds. We want those who have been left out of the post-employment economy and society to find their place in virtual worlds. Our goal is to have tens of millions and maybe even hundreds of millions migrate to virtual worlds by the end of this year.”

He pauses and gestures toward my dad. “James Bennet, who I’m sure we all know by now, will be the head of the operation. He will be working on the logistics of scaling up the product, along with managing the company, and executing a marketing campaign that will draw the eyeballs of everyone on Earth. Samuel Bennet will also be an instrumental player in the process.” Ralph locks eyes with me and motions with his hand for me to come on stage. I listen, despite being a bit nervous at walking on stage in front of hundreds of the world’s most powerful (okay, that’s a lie—I feel like I’m pooping my pants, but that’s impossible because I’m wearing a robe).

I turn to face the crowd, standing right behind Ralph on stage. The silence that follows me walking up on stage doesn’t help to make me feel any more comfortable. Most people have confused, shocked, and angry expressions on their faces. I can practically hear the same thought echoing in everyone’s head—how can this kid be given a position of such power when he just joined the Syndicate? Oh, that’s right, that man who founded the company, he’s my dad. After all, we both have the same last name.

I sigh, waiting for Ralph to continue. He seems to be gauging the reaction of the crowd just as I am, but from the smile on his face it is apparent he is getting a kick out of witnessing the condescending glares. It is quite laughable for any of these people to think that they are self-made; they have had their whole lives handed to them. But whenever someone else gets something handed to them, they instantly think it is unfair. I am here to agree with them.

This world is unfair because of people like me—because of people who are no better than anyone else who get opportunities that are better than most could dream of. Instead of trying to change it, I accepted for most of my life that this is how things are—it is rather easy to do that when you are one of the top beneficiaries of the system.

But now I know how much it can fuck one over too. The Syndicate made me one of those people. And part of me wants to make sure no one will ever get screwed like that again.

“Samuel will be the head political lobbyist for Chimera and the chief person involved in getting the United States Government to establish a Universal Basic Income to help subsidize the poor and elderly to pay for their stay in Life Pods. Life Pods will allow people inside to still communicate with the outside world and exit at any point they desire. But most won’t want to, and in a world of dwindling resources and an ever-restless populace, the council believes this is our near-term solution for solidifying our power in a post-employment world.”

Ralph takes a deep breath, his dry lips smacking together as he paces to the other side of the stage. “This is what they are doing. But we can help. By making this the main objective for the Syndicate to pursue this year, we can all leverage our businesses, our wealth, and our networks to help get as many millions to migrate to virtual worlds as we can. And Chimera can’t do this alone. They need our help in setting up the infrastructure to house the millions of people, along with the data-processing centers. They need help in getting governments not just in the United States but all over the world to regulate them minimally and promote them widely. They need the backing of financial institutions in receiving credit and loans to purchase land. And most of all they need the support of the common man, whose minds we can shape more than any other group of people in the world.

“We hold the power in this moment to make Chimera successful in their mission, which will ensure our survival in this changing world. And their mission won’t make just them wealthy. We all know James for a reason. We have supported Chimera in the past, just over a decade ago. We all need to see them succeed. It’s our ticket to even greater wealth and power. But this isn’t the council’s choice alone to support this objective. We have to all vote on this.”

He walks to the middle of the stage, the eyes of the Syndicate members closely following him. “A voice vote, as tradition has been for the last hundred two years, will be used to decide whether we support this objective. Everyone in favor of the Syndicate of Truth supporting this objective through our meeting next year, proclaim ‘yes.’”

A deafening, unified “yes” echoes in my ears. The movement on the hundreds of faces demonstrating their support for the measure sends a rush of adrenaline through me.

“And those who are against the objective, proclaim ‘no.’”

A boisterous sound of people defiantly yelling “no” in unison rings in my ears. As opposed to those who said yes, the hundreds who said no have a look of anger and disgust on their faces. No one dares scream out anything besides that, but I can tell that people aren’t exactly the biggest fans of my dad or me.

“Okay.” Ralph steps forward, his feet almost hanging off the edge of the stage. In the silence that follows his words, I nervously await his answer. He needs to say yes, he has to say yes. If not, my dad dies. If not, I will undoubtedly die too. “I think we have a clear majority here. The Syndicate of Truth will be supporting Chimera in their efforts to migrate as many people to virtual worlds as possible.”

A feeling of raw power courses through every vein in my body. The moment he says the words, every muscle in my body gets supercharged from the endorphins erupting inside me. I don’t feel on top of the world; I feel like the world is mine. And that’s a much better feeling. Everything that goes up must come down, but when it feels like it’s in my hands, I can hold on to this feeling forever.

At least, that’s my goal.

But the second after Ralph finishes speaking, the eruption of applause mixed with vitriolic screaming causes all the feelings overcoming me to wash away. The room erupts into chaos, with people arguing with each other, people cursing madly, and others beginning to push their way to the stage. From the bewildered expressions of everyone on the council, this is not supposed to be happening, and no one knows what to do about it.

Ralph opens his mouth to try to silence the crowd, but he falls to the ground before he can force a word out of his throat. The thunderous boom of a gunshot echoes in the lodge, the sound amplified by the skylights. The bullet connects directly with his head. And in an instant, the covenant that has held the Syndicate together for a century shatters.

Chapter 14

My ears and body shake as the entire structure vibrates with the massive flood of people rushing towards the exits.

A flurry of bullets descend upon the stage, the metallic shards connecting with two more of the council members. Then a jarring crack cuts through all the noise in the room. I turn to the direction it came from only to see one of the logs in the wall snap in half. The entire wall of the lodge soon tumbles to the ground.

I frantically scan the room, searching for a way to escape, but there is no chance I can somehow push my way out before the hundreds of people trying to flee. It is too late.

My heart palpitates so fast that it is likely on the verge of exploding as the far side of the roof topples down.

Ralph’s body lies on the floor of the stage, all life completely devoid from his figure. The pool of blood surrounding his body swathes my bare feet as his eyes remain glued open. staring up at the light peering through the skylight.

The sight causes a hot, stinging liquid to boil in my stomach. No tears fall from my eyes, and no emotions swathe my mind in the wake of the shock.

A forceful hand grips around my wrist and pulls me in its direction.

It is my dad.

The shock finally melts from my mind. We are all about to die, and I can’t let that happen. I run across the stage to the far wall of the lodge, where my dad pulls me to.

“Rip the boards off!” he screams, but even despite him speaking so intensely that spit flies all over my face, I can barely hear him over the chaos. His eyes have a look of controlled terror in them, while the muscles in his body appear to be lively and rigid with determination.

We both work together to pull up on the rotting loose plank at the back of the stage. It takes one violent yank to force the weathered nails to snap, and the board to subsequently fly off in the direction of our faces. I dive backward to avoid being knocked out by the plank, and then put my hands around the next plank, readying to rip that one out too.

I know exactly what my dad is trying to do. He wants us to get underneath the stage.

A deafening crackle that sounds exactly like thunder forcefully shakes every muscle in my body. The beams directly above us on the roof cracks. Everything else will soon follow, including my own back.

I glance at the rest of the lodge; half of it has already fallen down, trapping dozens of bodies underneath, while the council members are all standing on the stage, two with bullet wounds in their shoulders, and the others all looking out in shock. No one had any idea this was going to happen. Yet it always feels like a surprise when the world comes crashing down. I just have to make sure the ash and debris don’t kill me.

Two strong pulls on the board are all it takes to snap it in half, leaving enough space for our bodies to fall down into the crawl space beneath the stage. On the last pull upwards, my shoulders practically tear in half, and a blinding pain courses throughout my entire upper body. Almost all my muscle fibers have to be activated, and now my body feels like it’s dying.

“Get under here!” my dad screams, every vein in his face visible as he attempts to warn the councilmen, who all glance at us, speechless.

I don’t wait to make sure they follow. I slide my legs into the small eighteen-inch opening and duck down. Then I dive into the darkness, making sure to be completely out of the opening for when everything comes crashing down. Dry, desert-like dirt forces its way up my nostrils and covers my face as my body collides with the hard earth beneath the stage. My dad’s body hits my side as he dives next to me. Everything is absorbed in pure ebony except for a few rays of light that are peeking through the cracks in the boards. Three more men drop down beneath the stage, before everything collapses.

Almost the same instant that all three of them manage to get their bodies out of the way of the opening we ripped into the stage, the loudest noise I have ever heard in my life ensues. I can only describe it as something that sounds like countless bones being crushed into thin air in the same instant along with the intensity and cacophony of shattering glass.

I close my eyes, bracing my body for the impact of thousands of pounds of timber smothering me to death. I take a deep breath, one that I prepare to be my last, and only one thought crosses my mind. I wish I tried harder. I wish I tried harder to allow myself to feel happy.

The rumbling of the stage and earth beneath me only intensifies as the full force of the roof crashing down is absorbed by the wood, dirt, and our bodies. The entire building falls down, and for a brief moment, as the dust spreads throughout the air and the reverberations of the stage lessen, the screams silence.

An ominous chill courses down my spine as the energy shifts. I don’t know how many bodies are trapped underneath this building, but tragedies like this are never about the numbers as my mind likes to make it out to be. I quickly come to realize that the stage managed to support all the weight above it and that we survived. We freaking lived.

But that flicker of excitement dies out within an instant. I open my eyes to glance at the opening that we had crawled under the stage in. It is now full of debris. There is no way out. We are buried alive.

“Shit,” I mutter, which is the least necessary thing that needs to be said in this moment. It’s in the times that deserve silence and tears that I find it hardest to bring myself to those tasks.

I turn to where my dad is lying in the darkness. Although I can’t even discern the silhouette of his body through the blackness, his hand resting on my stomach lets me know where he is.

Even he doesn’t have any reassuring words in this moment. For a man who has constantly pleaded with me that everything is okay, even when I’m being threatened to death by his own brotherhood, when he feels this out of control then something must be beyond messed up.

The terror finally breaks through the shock and starts to protrude to every part of my mind. I start to come to terms with the fact that I am stuck underneath a stage in an enclosed area underneath thousands of pounds of rubble on a remote island in the middle of Maine without any food or water. And to make matters worse, I’m underneath here with probably the least popular people on this island, including myself, witnessing a century-old organization have their tradition reduced to shambles.

This building didn’t collapse. It was destroyed.

“We need to get out of here, I’m claustrophobic,” one of the councilmen says. It is impossible to tell who said it or even where it came from. In the darkness, everything seems to blend into one large vision of hell.

“Charles, shut up,” another man hisses. “We don’t need you complaining right now. We don’t have any other option but to wait this out. Moving shit around could just get us all killed.”

“No one might be coming to get us.” I stare up at the ceiling, not having any clue where to direct my voice to with how much sound echoes inside here. The air is already getting warmer from all of our breaths coalescing in what is essentially a sealed box full of maggots, ants, and other insects burrowing into the floor. “We have to try something.”

“Fuck. Don’t listen to him, Charles,” the same man speaks again, his tone as arrogant as I’ve ever heard. “He has no clue what he is talking about. You do that, and that could start an entire avalanche of shit pouring down the opening to kill us all.”

“You might want to listen to him.” My dad butts in now. “He is smarter than both of you, I know that for a fact. And he’s right, no one is gonna even know we are under here until we try and make a scene at getting out. We have to scream, and push, and do anything we can. Everyone is gonna clear off this island as soon as possible; we have to catch them before they go.”

No one responds to my dad’s claim. But no one objects. I take the silence as an approval. I crawl on the dirt, not giving a crap that my black robe is likely being ruined as it is scraping up against the coarse dirt and rocks on the floor.

Then I begin pushing up against the splintered wooden beams and logs that have fallen into the gap left by our do-it-yourself-before-you-die escape hatch. Splinters dig into my hands and feet as I alternate which of my joints does the pushing. I try different angles, trying to leverage as much of my strength as possible. My dad soon joins me along with another man who I presume to be Charles, and we all keep pushing the debris out of the way, making minimal progress and causing lots of pain. Within a few minutes I am already drenched in sweat, full of pain, and generally ready for this to be over.

But the adrenaline keeps me going, and it keeps me screaming too. I start yelling after realizing that it will take many hours that we don’t have to dig our own way out of here. I need to get the attention of someone from the outside. After I start to holler like a lunatic, that gives everyone else the free pass to join in. Even those who begrudgingly watched us try to burrow our way out before scream with all their might as desperation overcomes us all.

This awful state of existence goes on for what feels like hours. Outside, the sounds of dozens of people screaming and crying still echo in a never-ending chorus—there is no telling how many people have suffered injuries or even worse. My lungs feel numb, my chest hurts, and my entire body is stinging with the pain of torn muscle fibers or torn skin cells from the splinters. The creases in my hands and my feet start to blister up, and generally my whole body keeps trying to let me know that I need to stop doing this.

I don’t listen.

A ray of light finally shines through from the outside world. Up above, a sliver of the blue sky welcomes my eyes to the world we have been buried under. We all continue pushing, continuing to make progress as we shift each piece of debris one by one in a maddening death-defying game of Jenga as we try to pull the right pieces out without causing the whole thing to fall down.

Then, finally, someone answers our call. I hear the footsteps up above.

It takes about fifteen minutes for the team of people to work together to pull enough of the debris away so that there is a clear path for us to climb out. Throughout the ordeal, they reassure us several times that everything will be okay, and that we just have to stay calm and sit back. I ignore their commands, instead doing everything I can to help them from underneath. After multiple hours stuck underneath the rubble, the paranoia is getting to me, and I need to get the hell out.

After a few minutes, I catch a glimpse of the determined face of Jake. He is exerting himself so much that even in the cold he is drenched in sweat. One last log that makes up the wall of the building is heaved out of the way, and the hole ripped in the stage now has enough room to fit my body through it.

I crawl out immediately, a number of hands reaching down into the hole to help lift my body up past the broken pieces of wood and the number of sharp nails that stick out in random places in the pile.

I stand up on the pile of debris on top of the stage. Jake’s arms wrap around me, yet I remain motionless, my muscles rigid as the shock of everything finally hits me with the fleeting adrenaline. The entire clearing where the old, yet massive lodge stood has been leveled into a messy pile of broken wood and broken bones. The screams of people calling for help and others moaning in pain haunt my ears as my senses adjust to the bright light of day. I look over Jake’s shoulders and see Drew, his frail gray hair swaying in the gentle wind from the lake, staring at me with a smile.

I hug Jake back and watch as Drew helps my dad squeeze his body up through the narrow opening, emerging out from the wreckage virtually unscathed. I sigh and finally take a moment to allow myself to be grateful to be alive.

Chapter 15

I desperately need warmth.

After spending all that time up in Maine, I am officially done with freezing my ass off for little reward (unless you consider being almost buried alive a token of appreciation). That’s why I’m enjoying my time on this tropical island, listening to reggae music with a view of the ocean and a palm tree from the corner of my eyes.

Now, I’m not actually on a tropical island, although I certainly wouldn’t mind the opportunity. I literally got back to San Diego from Maine over an hour ago, and life is a bit too crazy right now to warrant such an excursion. That’s why I’m in a randomly generated map in Deadwave, Riva and I dueling it out in a private game of Deadwave as I shuffle through my playlist that I like to listen to in-game simply called VIBES (yes, that’s right, spelled with all capital letters). In reality we are both sitting down on the couch next to each other, but let’s pretend like we are actually here on a tropical island for the evening.

After such an insane day, this is definitely what I need. Seeing Jake again in and of itself calls for an insane day. My dad claims that he had no idea until he got there that Drew decided to be his big brother. When I asked about Jake, he had an emotionless look on his face, like he himself was trying to forget something that happened. He claims that he has no idea why Drew chose to save us from the collapsed building, but one thing is now clear: Drew is the one that manipulated Jake into destroying that house. And Drew likely isn’t done trying to mess our lives up, either. That became clear to me in how Jake all but ignored me after he saved me from the rubble. In front of Drew, he decidedly pretended that I am a stranger to him, and my dad immediately felt uncomfortable with it all.

My dad insisted on us leaving directly after we got freed from the rubble, which meant waiting on the several-hour line to get back on the boat. With three of the council members dead and another two injured, no one knows what to do. It isn’t known who shot the initial gunfire at Ralph or if and how the building was sabotaged to collapse, due to the volume of people in the crowd and how crazy everything was directly after the new Syndicate objective was announced.

My dad normally always has hunches and accusations about this kind of thing (he’s always quick to pass blame on to others), but the dozens of times I pressed him to tell me while we were waiting, and on the trip back, he shook his head silently each time. He doesn’t know who would ever risk shattering the covenant. But he does know one thing: that it is to get back at him.

He may have succeeded in getting himself to survive, but over a dozen others died in the process, and dozens more were injured. The network, which I am now connected to, is still trying to figure out how to cover up these crimes, and how to even make so many deaths of high-profile figures in a short time span not look connected. We all know the deaths can’t be spread out over more than a few weeks; it will be logistically too hard to get done.

And once the Syndicate burns, that could mean the whole world will follow.

My dad promised me I shouldn’t worry about any of this. He said there is always internal conflict, and although it has never been quite this chaotic, he knows that everything will eventually return to normalcy.

I sense something different this time around, though, and even though he isn’t saying it, from the nervous expression in his eyes, I can tell my dad senses it too.

Three members of the elected governing council of the world’s most powerful organization aren’t killed due to a tiny rift in the organization or someone acting out of impulse. This was a planned attack. This was a show of force to send a message.

And I have no clue who sent it, or what they are saying, but I need to find out. My life depends on it.

“Why don’t we go here in real life?” Riva’s voice echoes in my ear through the game. The helmet I wear to practice Deadwave at home blocks out all outside noise, but since we are both in the same lobby, in-game we are connected.

“Pshh.” Spit flies from my mouth. I’m happy she can’t see my face in real life, because my expression is likely as cringey as it gets. Instead of her seeing my real body, I have an avatar like all Deadwave players. Unlike me, he is extremely toned and bulky, with a buzz cut and bright red eyes. Yeah, I know that sounds like some computer-generated freak from an insane asylum, but for the tough-guy prowess I try to exude while playing Deadwave, it works perfectly. When hanging out with Riva Oldago, whose avatar looks exactly like her beautiful self, it makes me look super insecure and weird, but at least we always hold true on our rule not to have any physical contact in Deadwave. My Deadwave body is one that I never want to have a romantic experience in.

“Wow, someone does not sound too excited to go for an escape to a tropical island.” Even her avatar in the game flits her eyebrows in a cute, yet sassy way. “Is it just because you don’t want to go with me?” She laughs. “Cause I will gladly go without you.”

“No, I would go anywhere in the world with you.” I sigh and stare down at the pink sand that lines the beach. I am currently kneeling down behind the back of the beach chair with a sniper rifle in hand. Although sand this bright shade of pink definitely does not exist on Earth, its texture and fine particles still feel real enough against my bodysuit to trick my senses. “It’s just I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.”

“I understand,” she says. Right as the words leave her mouth, I aim my sniper rifle at a zombie coming up from behind her, killing the thing with a head shot instantly.

“Hey!” she screams. Her avatar raises the pistol in her hand and lazily fires at me from about a hundred yards away. “You could have shot me.”

“Wow, you’re gonna get mad at me after I try to help you out.” I sigh, this time shooting another bullet aimed at her that misses her avatar by a few inches.

“You almost hit me again.” She has a half-sarcastic, half-angry tone to her voice. “I’m afraid this exact thing will happen in real life.”

“What do you mean?” I stand up now, teasing her to shoot me from her perch behind a rack of surfboards. My health is currently at two hundred points out of a thousand, and hers is likely as low as mine. Any moment could mark our last on this beautiful tropical island, and my competitive spirit won’t allow me to cede victory to her.

The rush of victory is the best part of Deadwave. Now I need to learn to be grateful for the moment before it leaves, instead of constantly searching for more. I already won on the biggest stage, but sometimes the smallest victories are the sweetest ones.

“I’ve been getting dozens of death threats lately. People sending me hate mail, tagging me in gruesome pictures, and one guy even tried to send a dangerous package to this apartment.” Her tone softens, and I stop approaching her, readying to try and deliver one final bullet into her avatar’s skull. I ignore the low grumble of two zombies behind me, and instead listen to her soothing voice and the calming ebb and flow of the ocean waves. “I know the Deadwave World Tour doesn’t begin until January in a few months, but I don’t know how I feel about this anymore. After everything with my dad, I just feel like there are bigger things in life. I always thought I could help solve the problems in the real world by playing a video game in a virtual one, but now I realize how stupid that sounds. That’s why I was so excited about working with Chimera, and now the second I try and do something that doesn’t involve killing zombies, I have people threatening to kill me and others worshipping me. I have completely divided my fans, and in the process have only garnered more attention and more hate from millions. I even get yelled at just walking across the street into a car.”

“Whenever you do something different, people are going to hate you for it.” I turn around and fire two bullets at the zombies behind me, one arm blowing off the discolored figure and the other having its bare, hairy, dirt-covered foot shot into pieces. “That means its working, though. Real change doesn’t come without struggle, and at the end of the day, who cares what the world thinks about you? All that matters is what you think about yourself, and if this is any help, I think you are an unbelievable person.”

“Thank you, that’s great advice, but I’m already confident in myself. In fact, all the hate just makes me want to walk outside with a big smile, showing them that it can’t get to me. I don’t care about people’s words; I know most don't mean it.” She pauses as I deliver another two bullets to each zombie a few dozen yards away from me. Both fall, and I shift my gaze back to her. After years of playing this game, multitasking between killing virtual zombies and having an intense conversation is natural. “That doesn’t change the fact that I’m scared about what could happen. It has already happened to so much people, and I know there is nothing special about me preventing my own name from becoming yet another tragic headline that millions will click.”

If her avatar accurately displayed her facial expressions, I would likely see her glassy eyes and slightly frowny face. Ever since her father was transported to a virtual world, she has seemed to be confused between whether she should feel happy or devastated. It’s one of those instances you can’t prepare for.

It’s having to deal with him being gone, yet his mind just a fingertip away, that must hurt the most. I can kind of relate, because I self-inflicted that same pain upon myself with my mom. But I haven’t ever really dealt with the pain, regret, and guilt over her dying.

I hope I never do.

“You can’t let the fear get to you.” I fire a bullet at her and it misses, causing her to curse under her breath. “You can’t let what could happen stop you from enjoying what is happening.”

“I know, but I just… I feel like everything is so fragile in my life,” she says, the face of her avatar about fifty feet away from me, staring up directly into the sun, which doesn’t kill her corneas because it is a video game. “After losing my dad, I feel like every connection, everything in this world, could slip away at any moment. I mean, look at him— within a day his body gave out, and it could take literally milliseconds for something to go wrong in the computer to permanently destroy or alter his consciousness in that virtual world. And I don’t want the same to happen to you. I feel like so much is out of my control—Deadwave, my dad, the rest of my family, this entire world—but I just wanna know that you will be here with me.”

“Can we get out of this game?” I ask her, but already begin ripping off my helmet without her permission.

“Why? I’m enjoying it in here, I just asked you a question.”

“Can we talk in person?” I pull my plastic helmet off (my expensive designer helmet being reserved for when I play competitively), the darkness of the room we are in flooding my vision. “I want to hug you, and I can’t have these disgusting, watermelon-sized arms with veins popping out everywhere wrap around your body.”

“Okay, all right.” I hear her giggle, and a second later her gorgeous face emerges from the thick helmet that surrounds it. I place my helmet on the glass table in front of the couch we both sit on and move across the couch so that my arms can embrace every part of her.

I want to make her feel safe with my touch. I want her to feel loved, to feel worthy, to feel secure, and to feel happy. But the reason I need to do this right now, more than anything else, is because what I’m about to say is going to take all those feelings away from her.

Her hair smothers my face, and the aroma of her body turns me on in an instant. I hold my lips back from leaning forward and beginning to kiss her ear. I have to say these words. I have to tell her the dreaded thing I haven’t been able to say all night.

We have been together for three hours, and I feel like all I have done is lie. I can’t tell her that I went to be inducted into the Syndicate and almost died underneath a collapsing building, or even that I went to Maine, so I made up the excuse before I left that me and my dad were headed to a tech conference in Idaho. Good thing she seemed to believe me enough to not check my claim, because I’m pretty sure no tech conference would welcome the world’s wealthiest into an area of the nation the hardest hit by the changing economy.

And since I was at a random tech conference in the middle of Idaho, there is no plausible explanation as to why I would have ever seen Jake, which means I had to keep that secret from her too. Ironically, even though I lie to myself a lot, when I lie to other people, I always beat myself up for it. Deep down inside, I know I hold myself to a higher standard with others, not because I’m against lying on principle—there are some cases when lying is the best option—but because I’m afraid of what they will think of me when they learn of my deceit.

This time, I’m scared what she will think of me when she learns the truth.

“I have bad news…” My voice trails off, but continuing to embrace her feels right.

She waits for me to continue, but I just sit there, the cushions on the couch fitting around my back. My lips feel dry, the anticipation of the moment sucking all the moisture out of my mouth. As much as I don’t want to tell her that I have to leave for Washington D.C. tomorrow, I mostly don’t want to deal with it myself.

“And good news?” she says, a sudden apprehensive tone to her voice.

“No, just bad news. This may be our last time seeing each other in person for a while.” I gulp, an instinctual reaction whenever I get nervous. “I have to move to D.C. tomorrow. I’ll be the chief lobbyist for Chimera in Washington, which means I’ll have to spend at least the next few months before recess at the end of December in the capitol.”

I don’t say what that means for us; she already knows the instant the words come out of my mouth.

“Are you being serious?” She grips my arm tightly as if she is trying to hold me with her so I don’t walk away. “It’s all happening that fast?”

“Yep, I know it’s just life right now. Nonstop change.” I sigh, the thought of D.C. seeming more saddening as time wanes on. Just a few hours ago I was so excited to be able to work with Syndicate operatives to get a Universal Basic Income Bill passed. The thought of influencing so many people excites me. The thought of building an empire so powerful that governments can’t even touch it is one that makes me feel more determined than I have ever been. But part of me still longs for a simpler life. Part of me longs for all the love, happiness, and memories in San Diego, and I don’t want to leave it. I have lived here my whole life, and I’m not ready to say goodbye to it yet. I can’t let go. “But yeah, my dad and I talked about it this weekend. And this is what I have to do.”

“I can’t believe this is all happening so fast.” Riva positions her body so that she can hold both my hands and look me in the eyes. “I feel like it was just yesterday when we were both competing in the Deadwave World Tour and that we first met. And now you’re going to be a lobbyist in Washington D.C. and I’m being endorsed by your dad’s company. Chimera has changed everything.”

“And this is just the beginning. It’s going to change the whole world, it has to, and it’s all starting in the United States,” I say. Chills run down my spine as I envision everything I’ll have to deal with over the next few weeks. I already know one thing is going to be true: I’m not going to just be a lobbyist, I’m going to be a glorified political gangster. “I just don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave San Diego, my dad, and of course you.” Tears seep into my eyes as she kisses me on my cheek. “I’m gonna be over there all alone.”

“You don’t have to go alone.” She smiles, a glow in her eyes as she comes to the realization. “I can come with you.”

“What do you mean? Like come with me for a few days or like—”

“I mean I can move there with you.” She puckers her lips slightly as she moves her thick eyebrows in a goofy manner. “I only moved out here to help make connections to build my platform. Plus, with Deadwave having a bunch of competitions here, it made sense. But I’ve always been an East Coast girl. And what really kept me out here this whole time is my dad, because he couldn’t exactly move given his health. But now that he’s in a Life Pod I can live anywhere and still communicate with him. And it would be nice to be closer to my family on the East Coast—oh, and I guess being near you won’t be that bad either.”

“All of that makes sense, but are you sure you want to move across the country with a boy you have only really known for about a month?”

“Hell yeah.” She now sounds excited, which is the complete opposite of what I thought would happen going into this conversation. She playfully has one of her hands run down my chest and abs (the kind of abs you have when you are really skinny) and smiles. “Look, I don’t care what anyone says about you, you are amazing. And after nearly dying with you, and literally going to hell and back multiple times, I have seen sides to you that most in the world never have gotten to. It’s been a privilege, and you make me feel comfortable to be vulnerable around you in a way no one else has. It’s something about you, something about your energy that I really love.”

I definitely blush in the middle of her complimenting me.

“Well, dang.” I brush my fingers through a few loose strands of her hair poking out her ponytail behind her head. “You’re really good at this whole putting your emotions into words thing. Yeah, that’s not my strength. Well, the emotions to begin with aren’t my strength, but I can say that for you I feel things that I haven’t felt with anyone else, and I love that about us. I never use that word, but I think I’m starting to feel it for you. You’d be the only one. The only one alive.”

“For someone who apparently sucks at verbalizing their emotions, that wasn’t that bad. You gotta step out of your shell, Mr. Tough Guy.” She pokes my chest. “You brought me out of my own shell, and you helped me get through the two hardest times in my life: the moment when I felt more alone than ever, and the moment in which I thought my dad died. And despite all the shit in between, I’m excited to be a part of your crazy life, and I can’t wait for the future. I promise I’ll force our paths to connect as long as this lasts.”

I can’t resist her any longer. Right as she finishes saying those words, I lean in and let my body do the rest of the talking.

The feel of our lips connecting, her body intertwined with mine, and her hands all over me, makes me believe her when she says she will force our paths to connect. It makes me trust her. And it makes me only want her more.

The only problem is I don’t trust myself.

Chapter 16

In just twenty-four hours everything went ablaze. In some cities this took place quite literally, with people setting fire to stores and homes in wealthy neighborhoods, and of course government buildings. Many people use the disorder as an excuse to exude violence. In other cities, the resistance takes place in a more passive manner, with some towns holding labor force strikes and others refusing to support any business that has been helped by the New Age Initiative.

In a matter of a day, the thin wall holding this country together snaps in half. And this time it isn’t a battle of conservatives and liberals or the wealthy and the poor. It’s a battle over the future of human civilization.

It all got sparked by one social media campaign run by the Syndicate itself. Well, not exactly the Syndicate, at least not publicly, but the man in control of the largest social media advertising company in the world is a member of the Syndicate and someone who saw an opportunity in creating chaos.

So, he created absolute bedlam at a scale that few events in United States history have rivaled. The contents of the series of posts border on the line between propaganda and deliberate manipulation of the masses. They trash the New Age Initiative, a series of laws sponsored and brought forth by the last presidential administration that sought to implement a carbon tax, free re-education in new fields for those who lost their jobs due to automation, and a new, more progressive tax system. Although the Syndicate never exactly liked the New Age Initiative, they tolerated it because there is nothing better out there, and they knew that getting the country united behind something was crucial to not tear it apart.

Now, they have their answer to something way better than the New Age Initiative: simply take the money spent on all the green programs and infrastructure projects and use it to subsidize migration into virtual worlds. Just convincing people on the hype and the hysteria over the possibility of living forever isn’t enough to make real change happen.

The Syndicate and I know as well as anyone that the current system has to be destroyed first. And that’s what the series of campaigns that went viral did as hundreds of millions of people saw them. They had one simple goal: to persuade the people of America that the New Age Initiative isn’t working for anyone but the government by making it have even more oversight over our lives. Through a series of lies and misleading claims, they debunked everything good that government leaders love to constantly proclaim the New Age Initiative has done and remind Americans that life isn’t any better now than it was five years ago.

The message succeeded wildly in its ultimate goal of stirring anger and passion in the people. Even reading the posts made me feel angry, but when you know that it is all part of a giant game being engineered to have yourself at the top, it takes a lot of the emotions out of it. My mind only focuses on the numbers. The millions and millions of people who have voiced their dissent, disappointment, and outright vexation with their lives excite me. And the tens of thousands marching down the streets in front of me, loudly protesting the federal government right at their center in Washington D.C., send shivers down my spine.

We started a revolution.

A flurry of screams erupt at the front of the crowd of thousands of people marching. Riva and I stand more towards the middle, not wanting to stand out at the front. We more or less are here to observe what is happening so we can both fully grasp the impact of what we are about to embark on. We just arrived in Washington a few hours ago.

My dad had no problem with Riva moving to D.C. with me, and even said that would work better as they work to complete their new headquarters and massive Life Pod facility on the East Coast, in the suburbs of the nation’s capital. But we never expected things to be this crazy in our first few hours here.

We are now living in a city that millions of people are traveling to from all over the country to voice their dissent over the government and their neglect of a country that has been dying. They are furious, desperate, and determined. Which only makes the scene in front of us more erratic and intense.

The military personnel positioned in front of the crowd unload tear gas on the people as the mob threatens to approach the lawn of the White House itself. The chants of “Screw President Baron!” dissipate into shouts of pure terror. The cloud of gas swathes the bodies of hundreds of people, making it nearly impossible to see the chaos surrounding the White House or the snipers on the roof of the massive executive mansion.

A number of gunshots slice through the sounds of the screams. I can’t tell whether someone in the crowd opened fire on the military personnel, or whether one of the dozens of officers positioned in front of the White House, wearing bulletproof tactical armor and riot shields, shot into the crowd. But after the first few gunshots, everything erupts into madness at an apocalyptic level. Thousands upon thousands of people release blood-curdling screams into the cloudy, cold October afternoon air and sprint away from the White House. What was a moment of unity and collective force a few minutes ago instantly descends into a chaotic fleeing for one’s life that leaves every man fending for himself.

A stampede of people both young and old, men and women, and people of all different skin colors and even some with neon hair barrel through Lafayette Square and down Pennsylvania avenue, away from the pile of thick gas that has swathed most of the air. I grab Riva’s hand, and without spending another second to absorb the scene, we sprint.

“What just happened?” Riva fumbles over one of the cracks in the sidewalk in the park. I put my arm around her waist before she can fall into any of the people around us.

“I have no idea,” I yell into her ear so that she can hear me above the thousands of sounds combining into a cacophony. The peaceful protest erupts into a scene of mass violence within seconds. Benches in the park are overturned, and one man sets fire to the grass in the park, his futile attempt only causing a square foot of grass to char black. A number of people lie on the ground, having been trampled by the crowd, and with the gunfire continuing, no one seems content to help.

I think about turning back for a second to help one older man who lies on the cement, likely angry about his Social Security benefits not being enough to live off due to an illness ending his career early (the predicament millions of Americans nowadays face). But I decide against it. I tell myself that it’s because I want to protect Riva, but on the inside I know that she can easily protect herself.

It’s not about her. It’s because I know the real reason this is all happening. That’s why I insisted so badly on coming here in the first place.

I check the notification screen on my hologlasses while continuing to sprint across the Square onto 16th street. The Syndicate doesn’t have any sort of fancy group chat or closed group on the social media site My Hive. Instead they only allow us to communicate on their own encrypted network based on blockchain, which is often slow, and connection is questionable at best. It all works due to the device implanted into our neck (the same one that tracks us and listens to every conversation) that has a chip in it with the capability of connecting to the network. It is a relatively new addition to the Syndicate communications (they always move slow on new technologies), and with it, anyone in the Syndicate can contact one another at any time and also form their own groups or post things to the network-wide message board for everyone to see.

This time, the main network board floods with messages from one of the six remaining councilmen, Brett, who is an older, smart, yet sickening man in his approach to life. He is the founder of a ridiculous online group called ZOnion that promulgates conspiracy theories throughout the internet and every once in a while engages in weird acts to bring attention to their causes, like raiding towns naked in the middle of the day or barricading people inside stores. He claims over a million Americans subscribe to the internet message boards and threads associated with ZOnion, most typically being depressed males who feel they are on the fringes of society. He is a master at online marketing and one of the founders of My Hive, the world’s most popular social media site.

They worship their anonymous leader, who they call Z (but in reality is Brett), and take anything he says under the belief he is a figure high up in the government. Most of the rumors and conspiracy theories Brett puts on there are for fun and to see how they will react, which I have to admit is definitely awful but really funny that he can get a legion of people to believe some of the most ridiculous claims (one being that the President of the United States is an alien from Area 51). However, every once in a while he uses his platform for the original intent he built it, to service his own needs and those of the Syndicate by coming up with farcical claims that can spur violence and anger in some of the country’s most desperate, lonely, and unstable people.

That’s what he did today.

He told them that the government is putting deadly pathogens in the water supply to make people infertile and manipulate our minds into worshipping them and any policy they put forth. It is their first step to supposedly subjugating us all to a legion of robots that they will control, and he claimed the only way to stop this is to raid the White House.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The hundreds of people at the front of the crowd tried to push past the U.S. military, and they failed miserably. Brett knew this would happen, but he also knows that his will only give more attention to our cause, and make the government look even worse. The mission is to get the government out of our lives, and for Chimera to step in.

It’s working so far, but people are dying.

And this is just the beginning.

We turn left into an alleyway, the flood of people growing to be too overwhelming to be in the middle of. By now, both Riva and I can sense the shots and tear gas are unlikely to continue further away from the White House. A scene of mass violence takes over the streets, with people destroying shop windows, government offices, and others attempting to loot businesses and people’s own pockets. A flurry of sirens soon overwhelm all other sounds, and on the street just a few dozen feet away from us officers begin tackling citizens and putting them in handcuffs as they try to get a handle on the chaos.

It’s too late for that, though. Everything is out of control. And now the tensions in this nation have officially exploded, and it’s gonna take something crazy to clean it up. It’s gonna take Chimera.

Riva grabs my arm and runs her hand through her hair as we stand at the corner of the narrow, empty alleyway, watching order unfold in front of us. There’s no way to react to any of this except to stare on in shock. When you know you are responsible for it all, or at least partly responsible, it is the oddest sensation. I feel both like I’m going to throw up and I feel the unbelievable high of power.

“What if we are wrong?” Riva looks away from the street for the first time, a look of horror in her eyes.

“We have to be right,” I say, still keeping my gaze focused on the stream of people running by that thins out by the second.

“Nothing has to be anything in this world.” She shakes her head. All the hope that has been in her eyes the last week seems to be lost. “What if there’s no way to fix this? What if Chimera isn’t the solution?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happens.” I stare into her eyes, my voice groggier than I mean for it to be. “But we have to try. Someone has to try. And we have to be those people.”

“Why? Why are we better than anyone else? Why do we have to be the ones?”

“Because no one else is doing it. And sometimes the things that anyone can do are the hardest things to complete.” I hold her soft left hand with both of mine. “We can do this, I know it. We just have to hope.”

She hugs me, the passion in her body sending a rush of endorphins through me.

“I trust you, and I’ll hope with you too.” She smiles and kisses me on my chin.

I look back out at the shattered glass scattered across the street and the one body that lies in the center with a bullet wound in her leg. Only one thought crosses my mind.

This is just the beginning of the revolution. My dad has a plan. Chimera has secrets even I don’t know about. And once released, it will make all of this look like child’s play.

It will be the beginning of the end of humankind as we know it.

Chapter 17

A loud knock echoes in the apartment. Its metallic sound bounces off the cream-colored walls and haunts my brain. For the next few nights, I’m renting a small one-bedroom apartment in the heart of D.C. from someone online, until I can figure out if I’ll be living in a more permanent residence. However, due to the box-like character of the seven-hundred-square-foot apartment, the forceful knock reverberates through the room multiple times.

My heart picks up the second the silence encapsulating my mind falls apart, and chills course down my spine as I imagine who it could be. I fumble for my hologlasses, which sit on the small coffee table next to the couch in the main and only living area. No new notifications.

I glance at Riva, who still lies sound asleep on the long couch, her feet lying against my thigh. After she fell asleep, I have pretty much been sitting here dazed out, too tired and lazy to get up and crawl into bed a few feet away in the next room over, but also too awake to fall asleep on the couch.

Now, sleep is the last thing on my mind.

I stand up, attempting to be as quiet as possible as I make my way to the door. The surge of adrenaline inside me awakens all my muscles and knocks away the layer of haze coating my mind. This may be the police. I take a deep breath before opening the door, trying to come up with some bullshit so that they don’t ever come back. What if they are coming to arrest me because they found out that I was connected to manipulating ZOnion? What if they are questioning me about the riots earlier today?

I pause for a moment, and after letting the feeling of anxiety overcome me for a second, I let myself become excited. I know I can do this. I can talk my way out of anything. Talking to these people will be easy. I have nothing to worry about.

Before opening the door, I glance through the peephole. Jake is out there with a man dressed in a polo shirt tucked into his jeans, which seems awfully formal for any occasion this late at night. All the stories I was trying to manufacture to spit out to the officers flee my mind—now I feel like an idiot.

I open the door, allowing the bright light in the hallway of the apartment building to inundate the dark room behind me. I step forward, and before anyone can say hello, I close the door. Riva can’t wake up for this. I have no clue what this is about, but I know it must involve one thing: the Syndicate.

“What’s going on, Sam?” Jake extends a warm handshake to me. Apparently, that is what we do now that we are official members of the Syndicate. No more man hugs, no more dabs, and no more half-dabs half-man hugs. The way in which we communicate has been permanently altered. I’m kidding, it’s not that big of a deal, but to see the shift in Jake’s demeanor around these people is fascinating.

It must be tiring putting on such a good act.

“Um, I’m doing okay.” I eye the man standing next to Jake suspiciously and then look back at Jake. The man has brown eyes, a pronounced five o’clock shadow, and slightly curly hair that is beginning to turn from black to gray. If he were taller, I would definitely not act as cold, but due to his short, yet buff build, I feel that no matter who he is, he isn’t a threat if he tries to fight me.

“I wanted to introduce you to Justin Winslow.” Jake motions to him with a hand. “He serves as the representative for the Twenty-Third district in New York in the House of Representatives. He is currently the only Syndicate member that is an active member of the U.S. Congress.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Congressman Winslow.” I outstretch my hand, suddenly feeling severely underdressed for the occasion. I am wearing baggy basketball shorts and a blue hoodie that has the word Deadwave inscribed on it in white, blocky letters. I’m just lucky I didn’t walk out wearing boxers like I wear to bed most nights. “I’m Samuel Bennet, but Sam is usually cool with me.”

“Oh, I already know all about you.” The congressman shakes my hand and smiles. He has a peculiar accent. An odd mix between the roughness of a Manhattan accent mixed with the blandness of a Midwestern accent resulted in a man whose accentuation seems confused. “I read through your profile on the network for a while today. Very impressive accomplishments so far. You seem to be a bright young man.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Don’t worry, he did the same exact thing to me.” Jake shakes his head. “What is it with you people having to always remind us that you already know everything about us? It’s like you always have to shove it down our throats, like geez, man, we get it—no privacy.”

I take a deep breath. For a second there I thought Jake’s comment was about to fly off the rails, but he managed to keep it censored and verbalize my exact thoughts at the same time. This culture of having hundreds of people able to see your location at all times, the ability to listen into what you are saying, and access virtually all knowledge about your past is something I am still trying to get used to. I don’t know if I will ever get used to it. That’s how Justin and Jake knew where I was at this late hour—they just went onto the network (the application actually has no name and is encoded into what from the outside looks like an unsuspecting calculator) and found my exact coordinates.

“It’s our way of politely reminding each other.” Justin keeps his eyes on me as he responds to Jake’s question. He has young, vibrant skin, but deep circles underneath his eyes that should belong to someone at least ten years older than him. “It’s our way of saying we are all in this together. We are all making the same sacrifices.”

“I see,” I respond. From the expression on his face, he looks much more comfortable talking than he does listening.

“It’s the only way that the brotherhood can work.” Justin steps back, leaning on the wall on the opposite side of the hallway with an anxiety-ridden look in his eyes. “We all have to sacrifice. We all have to compromise. And we all have to be willing to give our blood to ensure the survival of the Syndicate.”

“Well, all of that seems to be going great right now,” Jake says without batting an eye.

“Yeah, right.” Justin laughs, but he closes his eyes. “Everything is falling apart. And we are the ones who have to put it back together.”

“Who even decided to tear it down in the first place?” The words spill out of me faster than I can think. “Who destroyed the lodge?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be able to tell. The man who did it is likely more obvious than we all think.” Justin widens his eyes at me. “My best guess is that whoever it is, they are angry that the Syndicate has always moved slowly. Compromise in nature is a lethargic beast. But the council, out of necessity, has had to execute more decisions on their own and give the general members less time to debate and work out deals on current issues. The world is moving too fast, and we have been trying to play catch-up for years before our power slips away. Chimera will allow us to be firmly in control.” He straightens up as he talks, the strength returning to his face. “If we can start and control this next revolution, we will ensure our power survives until the next generation. And we can ensure the stability of the world.”

“It all sounds crazy.” I keep my voice low, making sure it doesn’t echo too far down the hallway. There are no security cameras in this older apartment building, and at this late hour, there would have to be someone trying to listen in to hear us. “Crazy awesome, crazy that we are even at this point in history, and in the position to alter it.”

“That’s exactly why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you both about this.” He finally takes his hypnotizing gaze off me and focuses his attention on both me and Jake. “We are now a team. Like beyond a team, we are freaking glued to each other. The survival of our own lives and this organization depends on us sticking together and carrying out the operations at hand.”

“Yeah, of course.” Jake eyes me, an odd, apprehensive tension between us. The trust we have spent years building has been broken forever, there is no denying that.

“You two will have a lot on your plate these next few weeks. And of course, I will too.” Justin pauses and glances down the dark, narrow hallway at the sound of a cracking in one of the air vents. “You both, along with James, me, and Brett are all responsible for getting the Universal Basic Income Bill passed in this quarter and eliminating the threat of any regulations on Chimera. I’ll be attempting to get the support of my party’s caucus for the bill and will be sponsoring it. James will work to attend to any congressional hearings on Chimera and alleviate the concerns of regulators. Brett, well, we saw what Brett will be doing from today. And you both will be working as lobbyists, and frankly, political thugs, to bring the issue of the Universal Basic Income to the forefront and do whatever needs to happen to make sure it passes through a divided Congress. As much as it sounds like everyone is against the New Age Initiative, there is just a very vocal minority. Most voters are wary of the idea of living in virtual worlds, and politicians know this. You need to convince them otherwise.”

“Okay, that is definitely a lot easier said than done, but it makes sense.” I glance at Jake. “But is this it? Like, it’s just us?”

“Oh, why, do you have a problem working with me?” By Jake’s expression, I can’t tell if he is kidding or actually offended. “Trust me, I didn’t choose this either, buddy. I would have liked to ease into things.”

“No, not at all. Just wondering who thought this would ever be a good idea after everything they put us through.”

“I told you never to bring up the past.” Jake steps closer to me, within reach of my arms. “Never, ever, bring it up. I can’t talk about it. I can’t go back.”

“Wow.” I guffaw. “Was two weeks without me really that traumatic?”

“Hey!” Justin hisses. Even though he doesn’t yell, the force behind his whisper sounds all the same. “It doesn’t matter what happened in the past. You both are getting dragged in the same problems tearing us all apart. The council and both your big brothers thought it would be a good idea to pair you together because you both know each other and work better together than just about anyone. You are about to carry out the most important mission in the history of the Syndicate and maybe of this country. Don’t bicker like two little girls. You guys have a chance here.”

“Tomorrow.” Justin speaks coldly. He has a sort of paternal way about him, yet a mysterious hardness to his face that I can’t understand. “Tomorrow this all begins. We have no time to waste with any bullshit. You both will be representing Chimera and taking members from both the House and Senate on a river cruise with a plated dinner in the evening. You will both present a slide show on Chimera Life Pods and then offer each member who supports it ten million dollars. And for anyone who disagrees or threatens to leak the agreement, we will have tons of blackmail on all of them that you can project on a holograph above the dinner table for all to see.”

“That sounds oddly fun.” Jake smiles. Although he is in many ways the same person from a few weeks ago, he is also a completely different person now. There is a new anger in the core of his eyes, a tightness to his muscles, and a desire in him to exude the pain he has had to endure.

This new Jake scares me. But he excites me too.

“It is necessary. Government moves slow, but emotions move fast.” Justin has an emotionless look to his eyes. There seems to be a visible disconnect between what he is feeling, and what his mind is forcing his mouth to say. “We need to get things into action while things from today are still hot on everyone’s mind. Tomorrow afternoon you will both meet in my office to discuss things further. I will contact you with a time. Until then, rest up and be ready.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Sam.” Jake nods to me, the universal sign of both hello and goodbye.

“Pleasure meeting you, Sam.” Justin waves as he walks down the hallway towards the elevator at the center of the building. “I knew it would be best if we could talk about it the night before, once things on the streets quieted down. I know you both will do great tomorrow.”

“Thanks, and nice meeting you too.” I turn around and walk back to the apartment door. I put my hand on the handle to open it, the adrenaline flowing through me bound to keep me up all night, but then Justin’s voice stops me.

“Remember, we are all blood brothers through thick and thin. Tomorrow is the first step in what will be a lifetime for you.” He stares off into the darkness. “Just remember to do what’s right.”

I continue looking at him, watching him even as he turns around and enters the elevator. Not until the door shuts, and he and Jake begin their descent down to the first floor, do I finally walk back inside the apartment. I sit down on the old, painful wooden stool in the kitchen and let the events of today wash over me.

The process likely takes hours, but time seems to lose its place in the universe as I get absorbed into everything I try to prevent. My mind circles back to my mom. It has the visions of me falling off a cliff as a kid, the sirens blaring from the night my mom plunged off a cliff herself, and the feeling of my house rumbling as the entire back half of the house fell off a cliff and killed five innocent people. I cry, the tears starting off silent and light at first until they increase into a steady stream of sobs.

For some reason, when I cry alone in the darkness, it is easier to pretend that it never happened. It’s easier to pretend that Riva nearly drowning, the fires in the Spiders World Amusement Park, the collapsing of the lodge on White’s Island, and all the threats to my own life are all just a series of traumatic nightmares. But the darkness also reminds me that the pain and the fear are very real.

So much in my life has fallen apart.

I can’t let that happen again.

I can’t let anyone or anything have power over me.

Chapter 18

Have I mentioned that I hate the cold?

Well, I fucking hate it, and it’s back to bite me in the ass again, and try and freeze off every limb in my body. I am wearing a black blazer with a light blue undershirt, navy blue tie, and brown pants, and none of them are helping to combat the frequent gusts of wind off the lake. Yes, I feel disgusting—like a mannequin in a department store whose muscles are tight from never moving. And my mannequin is stuck right under the air conditioning vent.

Okay, I’m done with this metaphor for now. The point is I don’t look or feel cute. Even Riva didn’t compliment me at first. Before I left the apartment, she looked at me all confused and then commented how my body looks out of place in clothes like this.

I can’t argue with her because she is right. My entire being is out of place at an event like this. I am at the top of a luxury river-cruise liner, meant to fit over two hundred people at lavish parties surrounded by the nation’s most prominent political figures. Not only are large social gatherings like this not typically my vibe (except when Jake peer pressures me into going to one) but the stuffy, fake atmosphere that the boat seems to collectively captivate is abhorrent in my eyes. People are wearing designer suits and dresses, watches that cost more money than half of Americans make in a year, and wearing cool shades just to flex.

The sun is beginning to go down, and although some of the rays of sunlight are reflecting off the water, creating a sharp glare around the boat, being nearly thirty feet above the water on the roof of a three-story ship means there is no reason for sunglasses.

These people see things differently.

I nudge Jake with my shoulder as I connect with one congressman who has clearly gotten a little bit too drunk off the open bar on the boat. I watch in slight fascination and slight horror as he unbuttons his shirt to show people his third nipple.

“He’s lucky no recording devices are allowed here tonight.” Jake looks on in both disgust and amusement. “This would go viral so fast.”

“Yeah, it would be a welcome break from all the crazy conspiracy theories and political rants going viral right now.” I let my fingers brush over the small, metallic, circular device in the pocket of my suit jacket. Since no devices of any kind are allowed on this boat so that the politicians can speak in private (how ironic the people of Congress want to maintain their privacy when they are stealing it from practically every American and storing all our data in a facility in the desert), we have to use a special holographic projector with the presentation already downloaded on a file inside.

“Are we ready to do this?” Jake eyes me then looks back at the crowd, which has several dozen men and women, the most successful politicians all over the country, mingling in little circles like middle schoolers at a dance. Everyone is likely still trying to fight off a food coma from earlier. After the three-course dinner was served by the catering staff at the boat, everyone moved up to the chilly rooftop of the ship to enjoy the view of the dark waters of the Potomac and the thousands of buildings that line the skyline of Washington D.C. and the surrounding suburbs.

“Yeah, we got this, man,” I say confidently. “Justin told us earlier to let the presentation do most of the talking and that we can be here to answer any questions.”

“I know.” Jake leans in to make sure no one around us can hear. “But we haven’t even seen it yet. We have no clue what is about to happen.”

“There won’t be anything in this presentation that we don’t know about Chimera already.” I eye Justin, who stands at the edge of a circle of all-male senators smoking at the far corner of the hundred-foot-long boat. “My only worry is what they will think. They barely even know why they are here, I’m sure some can guess, but they have no idea what is coming.”

“It will be fun.” Jake grins in an evil way. “Let’s get this thing started.”

“Okay.” I take a deep breath, a thin cloud of steam escaping from my mouth. I pull the device, only slightly bigger than the head of a thumbnail, out of my pocket and press the tiny button at its center. The top of the device instantly opens up, allowing a large holograph to project straight up into the air about ten feet above the boat.

I have never been to any kind of corporate presentation, and due to almost zero taxpayer funds in public schools and most private schools shutting down, I have never seen a presentation on a device remotely this cool.

I try not to look too surprised before calling out to get everyone’s attention. If things go really bad, Justin says he can try and save us a bit, but he isn’t proposing the Universal Basic Income Bill until tomorrow, which means everyone is totally in the dark about our idea until now.

“Listen up!” My voice carries surprisingly well throughout the crowd. “We have a video about Chimera to show all of you.” Everyone is slow to quiet down, but the second I utter the word Chimera, people glance over with interest.

I wait a few moments for the entire crowd to quiet down. Even speaking in front of people in this kind of setting gives me a rush of adrenaline and fear at the same time. As much as my mind loves all the attention, my body is still shaking from the fear of messing up.

“It will only be a few minutes long, and I hope it can show you all our vision to change the world.” I hold out the device in my outstretched arm, angling it so that the dozens of people on the boat have the best view of it as possible.

Everyone watches intently. They all know that nothing comes with strings unattached. That’s why they came here. They know we are going to be pitching them on how they can help the future of Chimera, and in turn how Chimera will help the future of this country. And with things reaching crisis levels with the number of people who refuse to go to work and the others who are jobless all protesting in the streets together, something must be done. That’s why they are holding a hearing about Chimera tomorrow on Capitol Hill, but we want to lock in their minds and pockets before my dad even has a chance to walk onto the Senate floor.

The presentation is quite simple. It has multiple shots from some of America’s most treasured National Parks like Yellowstone, Acadia, and the dying Everglades, with the soft, deep, succinct voice of a narrator speaking over the images painting a picture of what the future with Chimera Life Pods will look like. The presentation at first appears to all be shot inside the real world, until it reveals that each landscape view was taken from a simulated world using Chimera’s Virtual World Generator. The whole sight blows my own mind. I have to exert a great deal of effort to not look surprised when glancing up at the presentation. I have never been inside a Life Pod, and given that it would require a microchip being implanted in my brain, until my own brain is beginning to cease functioning, that’s something that I’d prefer to pass up on.

With the backdrop of the gorgeous landscapes full of deer, birds of all kinds, and people walking about and smiling, the narrator explains the vision Chimera has for its Life Pods and how the technology works. After that, the narrator, which is likely just a computer-generated voice reading a script, finally gets into the real reason Chimera (and in turn the Syndicate) paid tens of thousands of dollars for everyone to be here tonight, and is prepared to shell out tens of millions garnering their support.

The moment the Universal Basic Income Bill is proposed, meaning the imminent death of the New Age Initiative and the effective government subsidy of tens of millions, and maybe even over a hundred million people into a permanent migration into virtual worlds, many gasp and whisper to each other. Most of the senators and representatives here support the New Age Initiative. In fact, it’s precisely why we pushed them to come.

Their political careers depend on the popularity of the New Age Initiative, and this presentation seeks to show them its ill-fated future with the people, and how they can still maintain their seats in office during the election in just a few weeks as long as they pledge to support our cause.

As the presentation comes to a close, people scream at me and Jake immediately.

“Do you seriously expect us to believe any of this bullshit?” hollers one younger woman with dark red lipstick on, lunging forward.

“The UBI Bill won’t be any better than the New Age Initiative.” One man shakes his head.

“Fuck you!” the drunk Congressman who was showing off his third nipple earlier bluntly screams at us.

Well, great, this is going completely awful. I glance at Jake, both of us trying to gauge the reaction from the crowd on a scale from bad to nightmarishly awful.

“Dude,” Jake whispers through his teeth to me. “What the hell do we do?”

“We have another presentation after this, remember?” I smile. That will seal the deal for us for sure. With elections coming up in just a few weeks, we have the power to unseat all these people on their re-election campaigns. One thing that each senator, and of course representative, has in common is that they are running in contentious districts and states versus well-funded partners in the midterms.

“Let’s be respectful.” Justin speaks up above the crowd. Unlike most of the politicians, he holds a glass of water in his hand, and his suit, despite him having access to the nicest in the world, looks worn. His wrist is bare of any watch or bracelet, which is breaking all the rules of the fashion police in the minds of these people. As Congress has had an influx of younger people in it, the average wealth of a person in Congress has only increased. The average net worth of everyone here is in the millions of dollars, over thirty times higher than the average American. “They are still just teenagers. Everyone’s voice deserves to be heard.”

Reason seems to prevail in the moment. The angry yells and poisonous whispers halt. When there aren’t any cameras or people from the outside watching, they are the quickest to jump to their raw human tendencies: their desire to divide and conquer anything that isn’t like them.

“We need this bill passed now, by the end of this current session at the latest. And we need your support and will to push this bill through Congress and get it onto the desk of the president. We can’t have this bill get drowned out by other matters, and we can’t have congressional oversight and regulatory measures stop the progress of Chimera in trying to free the American people.” I pause, people staring at me with both looks of wonder and disgust. The bewildered expressions catch me off guard, ruining the flow of my speech.

Then Jake cuts in. “That’s why we are giving anyone and everyone who pledges to support our cause ten million dollars each over wire transfer or just in cash that can be used for your re-election campaign, or any other use you deem fit.” Jake pauses after his words, and I glance at Justin, who stands in the corner with an emotionless expression on his face, but the energy and excitement is visible in his eyes. The entire ship seems to stop for a moment as the magnitude of the amount of money that Jake just mentioned sinks in. Even by these people’s standards, and the grotesque amount of money that is often used to bribe members of Congress, ten million dollars is a frankly absurd amount, and money can get everyone excited and willing to break the rules.

“If you plan to support us, just come up to either me or my colleague Sam afterward and we can briefly discuss the arrangements for the transfer of capital. And as for all of you who plan to not offer your support to our cause, just remember people in this country are angry right now, and the desperate, forgotten voices in this country will be out voting in droves.” He motions for me to press the button on the device. I do, and the top opens up once again, giving way for the second presentation to project out into the darkening evening sky. “Just remember you are all up for re-election.”

The video begins playing directly after, and Jake steps back, receding behind me as the holograph flashes through dozens of pictures frame by frame. Everyone in the crowd looks at me, absolutely appalled. They deal with blatant bribes and angry demands all the time. It’s just part of the system—that doesn’t surprise anyone. But the dozens of screenshots, lewd photos, and videos of congressmen saying racist and bigoted remarks immediately shock everyone. Even some of the servers and crew attendants on the ship glance at the holograph, pretending not to pay attention, but in reality, they are shocked at the content.

Blackmail at this scale is something that rarely happens. We have buckets of dirt on everyone, dirt that can forever destroy their re-election campaigns and their careers.

It all flies by so fast that it barely gives each person enough time to read through each image, but from a quick glance, it is apparent the destruction each of these pieces of media can do. They will destroy credibility, ruin marriages, and end lives.

They are humiliating, mean, and disgusting. Every person on this boat is lucky no one has any electronic devices on them, or else they would be screwed.

The thing is that nearly everything on this slideshow has been manufactured from thin air. The nude photos are generated by computers, the videos of the people saying and doing heinous things are all deep fakes meant to trick the viewer into thinking the media is real when the footage is manipulated and a computer-generated voice (that sounds exactly like the person) is used, and even the texts and email exchanges have all been tweaked and photoshopped. Of course, there are real images and videos intermixed into it all, and the Syndicate didn’t stretch the truth too much. Brett and Justin both collaborated on this project and hired out a private team of hackers to steal much of their information to only make everything more believable.

We know everything about them too. And we can use it against them.

After just about a minute into the video, everyone realizes what is happening and panic ensues. Some people immediately scramble to us to attempt and accept our bribes as others charge at us and scream at the top of their lungs that we are horrible people.

Everyone knows it is full of lies. Deep fakes and blackmail of this kind are nothing new in politics. It has been going on for decades, but they probably seldom deal with two lobbyists (or political thugs, as Justin says) who are this forward in their will to ruin all their lives. Because even though it is mostly lies, everyone knows that in the eyes of the opposition and the eyes of the public, it is all content that can be used against them.

No one knows what to believe in this world anymore, but these images highlight the story Chimera is trying to tell—that these people aren’t fit for power. And people won’t care if it’s true or not; they will choose to believe the story we are feeding them because it will validate their feelings of anger.

No one cares about the truth anymore.

They just want to believe whatever makes them feel the best.

And that’s exactly why the group of politicians who a second before had pompous attitudes and showcased their sense of style and class turn into a mob not unlike the one in front of the White House yesterday. The screams of vexation soon turn into people throwing their glasses at us and spilling alcohol on us from up close and afar.

I can hear Justin screaming, but it is way beyond his power to try and get control of everything.

I turn to Jake and know what we have to do. I push a fat, middle-aged man off me, and kick another man in the groin as he briefly wraps his hand around my neck. These people might literally try and beat us to death right here. We triggered all of them into an apoplectic frenzy and we have to go now. The swarm of dozens of people circles around us, all of them seeking to grab a hold of the device that I shoved into my pocket.

These politicians are just as angry and desperate as the rest of this country. They are just as scared of the lies, and even more scared of the truth. They are trying to hold on to their power as the American people are trying to hold on to their lives, and all are losing grip.

Something crazy is about to happen. If someone already had a weapon on this boat we would be dead, but the metal detectors and security guards stopped anyone from bringing in anything lethal. But they can’t stop these people from suffocating us to death. They can’t stop them from throwing so much glass at us that we bleed to death.

I explode forward, knocking over a short woman in front of me, and barrel through the crowd. I fight off the people grabbing at me, Jake and I working together to ensure neither of us gets thrown back into the mob. A number of fists connect with my head and body. Spit, phlegm, and other gross bodily substances that people can spit out land on my face as shards of broken glass dig into my hands and cut through my dress pants.

I block out the pain, and instead let the frenetic pace of my heart and adrenaline carry me forward. I can’t even think about how cold it’s gonna be. I can’t even think about the fall.

I reach the edge of the boat, just escaping the grip around my waist from one slightly tipsy man. The boat is just a few hundred feet from the base of a large bridge and park that we can climb onto and escape.

We just have to survive the swim there.

I don’t even look over at Jake to see if he is prepared to jump with me. I don’t wait another second. I grip the device full of the blackmail in my hand, making sure to hold on to it during the fall. Then, I vault over the waist-high railing and leap off the boat.

I scream, the rush of adrenaline and dopamine from my body plummeting thirty feet sending a rush of brief joy through me. Then the terror comes back the second my body connects with the freezing water.

I can’t move.

Chapter 19

The cold water shocks every muscle in my body.

The water is definitely warmer than the droplets that sprayed all over me on the ride over to White’s Island, but with hundreds of gallons of water surrounding my body and filling every one of my pores with pollutant-filled liquid, the icy feeling is everywhere.

I open my eyes the moment my body submerges underneath the dark currents and realizes that I am a solid five feet underwater with all my muscles tight, and unresponsive to my brains commands to force my way back up to the surface.

Panic fills my mind in an instant. The surge of adrenaline that accompanies my gasp for air, which only results in water pouring into my lungs, finally sends my body into action. A series of erratic arm movements and kicks send me back up to the surface. To say I’m out of my element in the water is an understatement. Even living in San Diego, I have never been the greatest swimmer. Despite the beautiful air temperature, the water is cold for most of the year, and to me staying inside and playing video games sounded more fun any day. I’m regretting that decision now. Not only am I not prepared for the cold water, but the strong current of the Potomac keeps on dragging my body further away from Jake.

Items from the boat crash down on the water around us. People throw glasses, one table lands a few feet behind us, and several bottles of wine bounce off the water before floating around us. Every one of their attempts to try and knock us out or hurt us to the point of drowning fails; instead, they only succeed in making me even more disoriented with my surroundings and splashing myself in the face with cold water. Their laughter and screams boom off the bridge and carry over the water. Dozens of them stand on the edge of the ship, the angry, yet vindictive expressions on their faces sending chills down my spine, which is already shivering.

The boat doesn’t stop for us; if anything, it speeds up as it continues under the old cement bridge that looks like it could fall apart at any minute. The New Age Initiative clearly hasn’t done its job here, but then again it hasn’t done it in most places. There simply isn’t enough money to solve the world’s problems. Well, that’s not true. There simply aren’t enough people willing to share.

As the boat continues to work against the current, pushing upstream, the screams of laughter and vitriol reduce to a dull echo in the back of my mind. They are probably headed down the river thinking that we are both gonna drown, our bodies unlikely to even be found at the bottom of the river amidst all the industrial waste and scrap metal. Just two more tragedies in a world with millions.

They have no idea what they are talking about. We will prove them wrong.

I clench my hand around the portable holographic display device, holding on for my life to not let it go. The success of the entire operation depends on its survival. Besides money, it’s our only leverage over these people, and if I lose it, I’d imagine no one in the Syndicate would be happy at having to try and remake the presentation and retrieve and fake all the blackmail again. They don’t back up any of their information in their cloud, they only store it on their own hard drives that can be destroyed at a moment’s notice if need be.

This tiny thing that can easily slip through my fingers needs to stay with me, but it’s almost impossible. Both Jake and I immediately start swimming forward towards the shore ahead. From the top of the boat, it appears a lot closer than it does from down in the water. The lights of the shore seem to be getting farther away as we claw our way forward through the water.

“Dude, it’s so far away.” I don’t have to speak too loudly for my voice to carry over the water. Behind us, the lights of the hundreds of buildings along the shoreline of the Potomac shine through the darkness beginning to blanket the land. Up above, beautiful flashes of red and pink paint the gray clouds as the sun’s rays wave their final goodbye for the day.

The lack of boats on the river and the quiet, peaceful vibe that floating in the middle of the river provides makes me want to hang out on an inner tube in the middle of the currents and watch as the sky above turns to one filled with stars. But the fact that we are both stuck in the middle of a river with powerful currents, trying to make it to the shore that is largely dark and empty of any buildings aside from a parking lot takes out any enjoyment from it all.

“We have to take off our clothes.” Jake stops swimming forward and rips off his blazer. His curly hair covers most of his face, causing his head, which sticks out of the water, to look like a dirty mophead.

“We just bought these today.” I keep my legs going in circles as I try to tread the water and not get dragged underneath by the undercurrent. I don’t rip off my clothes as eagerly as him, instead taking a more skeptical approach. I’m never one to have an emotional attachment to things, but throwing out my first suit after only one day seems extreme.

“Screw that, man.” Jake glances at the shore. As the current pushes us further downstream, the large island in the middle of the river still is directly across from us. “Our shoes and all this clothing are gonna weigh us down. We gotta take them off.”

“You’re right.” I knock off my brown dress shoes by pressing my foot down on each heel. “Can you hold the holographic projector device thingy while I take mine off?”

“Yeah.” Jake grabs it from me, his torso fully unclothed, and probably his lower half too, but I don’t look that closely. I rip my clothes off hastily, my tie ripping in half from the force from which I tear it off me. No one has any time to wait and unbutton clothes, we have to get the hell out of here.

I eventually strip down into nothing, not even underwear. I sigh, the feeling of the cold water seeping into literally every part of me both freeing yet numbing.

“Did you rip your underwear off?” Jake hands me back the drive, his eyes widening as he stares at my naked body in the river. He swims forward before I respond, keeping his head above the water as he swims diagonally against the current to the shore of the island.

“Yeah, was I not supposed to?” I feel in the water around me for my underwear, the thought hitting me now at how awkward it will be when I emerge onto the shore totally naked. I look to the right, and spot my underwear floating downstream a few yards away from me, but I decide to begin following Jake anyway.

“I mean, you can do whatever you want.” Jake laughs, water piling into his mouth the second he opens it. “You better hope no one is on shore.”

No, I better hope we make it there to begin with.

I put my head down into the water and swim forward. Things are too urgent for Jake and I to laugh about how I ripped off all my clothes and am swimming naked in the middle of a river. Things are even too dire for my body to register the coldness of the water. The adrenaline and anxiety numb all my nerves, and the only thing I focus on is reaching the shore before the current sweeps me away.

“Take it at an easy pace,” Jake calls back to me. By the standards of our group, he certainly is the swimmer; with one year of elementary school swim team under his belt, he is an expert compared to my skills that can keep me above the water, but not much else.

I exert so much energy, my arms and legs smacking against the water with as much force as possible, but my entire body seems to be out of sync. I am better at being a log in the river than pretending I can swim. At least it feels that way.

I slow down my pace, instead trying to imitate Jake, who cuts through the water in smooth, even strokes. He has always naturally been an amazing swimmer, which never seemed important until now.

The cold water cuts through my body, causing the frigid sensation to seep into my bones and a painful tightness to reside in my chest. We make slow progress through the river, finally closing in on the shore up ahead. The beating of my heart against my chest hurts, and every muscle in my body aches. The feeling that I may just die, the strength in me fleeing as my body succumbs to the current, fades with every passing stroke of my arms. The drive inside me won’t let that happen.

I can’t let those shitheads on the ship win. I don’t care if they are in the Congress of the United States. I don’t care if they are the most powerful politicians in this country. They don’t know that we control them. We are the ones who really pull the strings, and our agenda, and my goal to be part-owner of the world’s most valuable company and one of the richest men, will become their agenda.

I’m the one with the power. A surge of energy courses through me as I fall into a rhythm with my breaths. I push through the soreness in my shoulders and core, my mind locked in on one particular part of the shore ahead.

My breaths turn to pure grunts of desperation as land approaches yards away. A thin wall of rocks lines the shore and a fence that opens up to the park with a trail directly behind it. The feeling of the cold and pain returns, and I know this time that it is here to stay. It is only a matter of time before it overtakes me.

But my feet touch down on the rocks lying beneath the water’s surface as I shout. I pump my fist in the air. We are victorious over the endless river current. I view everything in my life as some sort of game. My mind always gets caught up in viewing life in black and white, good and evil, winning and losing, and happiness and sadness.

This time, we won.

Jake stands on the rocks ahead of me, his wet boxer briefs pressing up against his groin more like speedo. He steps onto the wooden barrier surrounding the grass field of the park and vaults over the black metal fence that lines the shoreline. This is the first instance in which I wish I kept my underwear on.

I follow him, trying to avoid scraping any parts of my body against the metal. I succeed in this, and upon making it over the barrier, I collapse into the grass on the other end, the exhaustion and cold knocking the will to stand out of me.

Jake lies on the grass too, both of our pale, shivering bodies staring up at the dusk beginning to settle over the sky above. Across the road there is a layer of trees, and at the end of the road near the bridge, which we got forced away from by the currents, there is a parking lot with only a few cars scattered throughout it. We both breathe heavily, trying to let our heart rates return to normal and for the numb feeling all over our bodies to subside.

“What the hell do we do now?” Jake sits up and stares at the white sedan that passes by on the road. The driver doesn’t even notice us, likely staring at their hologlasses as the self-driving car navigates the roadway for them.

We have no way of connecting to the Internet, no way of knowing where we are, and we are both drenched in freezing water with no clothes or towels to warm us. As far as First World problems go, this is the equivalent of being stranded in the middle of Antarctica with no food or water.

“We wait for the Syndicate operatives to come.” I stand up, trying to have the wet dirt beneath me touch as little of my skin as possible. “Justin said he’d give them our location if anything happened as a back-up plan. I’m sure they will be here soon, with our hologlasses and some clothes. Justin made sure to have the runners on standby.”

“No, we can’t wait for them.” Jake walks to the road.

“What’s your genius plan, then?” Of course, the first day of us working together again and really seeing each other, we have to be thrown into an awful scenario. In the moments that matter, I can still feel the brotherly energy between us, but most of the time I can feel a disconnect between us. And it hurts.

“Walk to the parking lot, wait for someone to go to one of their cars and get a ride with them back to a convenience store or something. I don’t trust those gang members taking us home.” Jake widens his eyes as he stares at the car barreling down the street. “I don’t trust them at all. Neither of us are particularly intimidating, and we don’t have any weapons. They could do whatever they want to us and—” He cuts his voice off. He remembers the listening devices in our neck. He mouths his next words, his lips still quivering. I have known him for years, so discerning his next words proves to be easy.

I don’t trust the Syndicate. They have no reason to care about us.

“We have no choice.” I speak out loud. I don’t intend to get into this conversation right now, not when we have to get into the car of local gang members and hopefully come out unscathed. He doesn’t know what he is talking about, he hasn’t seen what I have seen. I don’t know if I can trust them or not. But I do trust that they will kill me, and that’s why I’m gonna do everything in my power to stay alive.

The black minivan with tinted windows rolls up before Jake can walk down towards the parking lot any further. Just from looking at the vehicle, I can tell it is inconspicuous enough but tough enough to serve them in a number of purposes in the business of making money in the underground.

One man and one woman emerge from the vehicle. Neither wear masks, and they both wear sweatshirts with jeans. They both have soft faces and look too inviting, and too friendly to be part of an organization that runs the crime in the greater D.C. area. Is this some couple pulling over to help us out?

I back up, not wanting to get wrapped up into the wrong hands and end up having to explain how two boys could even end up without any articles of clothing, shivering their asses off at the fall of night.

“Hey.” The man pulls out a pistol from his pants as the woman still approaches us with two towels in hand. “We are here on orders from Mr. Balouris.” The minute Jake and I hear that name, we both let our guards down. It is the code name that Justin told us anyone would use if sent by him.

“Get in the car, we have to take you to the drop-off location now.” He still keeps his gun raised at us, the prospect of having a fully loaded firearm pointing at me still just as scary as the first time it happened. Neither he nor the woman seem to be fazed at the less than ideal sight of me being fully unclothed, and at this point, I don’t care either. I just want warmth. “You can both change in the back.”

I comply with his orders and sit in the back of the vehicle. The blast of warm air from inside the beige interior of the vehicle causes a stinging-like sensation to swathe my nerves. The woman, who appears to be in her sixties, throws a towel at my dripping wet body. Lying on the top of each pile of clothing—one pair of sweatpants, dark shades, neon beanies, and a long-sleeve shirt for each of us—are our hologlasses.

Like any addict, before even meeting my essential needs of warmth and clothing, I put on the hologlasses and check the notifications. A series of messages display in our group chat on the Syndicate network.

I glance at Jake as we both read the messages from Brett and Justin at the same time. None of the politicians on the boat expressed any further interest in our bribe, and all figured out that we were lying about the blackmail we had. They attempted to call the police to go and find us, but Justin already made sure that any investigation into it would be dropped quickly without any charges towards Jake, Chimera, or me. All of them resolved to say nothing bad about Chimera, in fear that we would release the fake dirt we have on them, but they don’t view Chimera as a threat to their seats in the midterm elections.

They are going to continue on with business as usual. Meanwhile, a group of servers at the party were hired as undercover interns by the team of one of the senators to listen in to the conversations of the president pro tempore of the Senate at the dinner. Those interns obviously happened to see the shit show that went down on the roof of that boat, and one of them released a scathing post and video on My Hive that they had taken on a secret camera they snuck in.

The post is beginning to get hundreds of eyeballs on it, that can soon turn into hundreds of thousands, and it rips apart Chimera, dubbing our whole operation as a scam to keep the rich in power and the poor subjugated. It’s exactly the opposite of what Chimera needs right now. We can’t have any bad press, and we can’t risk giving any fuel to the opposition and putting doubts into the minds our base. But it might already be too late to stop it.

Tonight turned out to be a tragi-comic disaster ending up with me cold and naked.

It all ended up being a freaking mess, even worse than I thought the worst possible scenario was.

And now Jake and I have to clean it up. Now we have to take out these interns, permanently.

Chapter 20

In dark times, humans will resort to any measure to survive.

For the retired couple driving us to the drop-off location, unable to live off their meager Social Security payments, that means working for the cartel to deal drugs and launder money in the D.C. suburbs. And through the connections the Syndicate has with the cartel, it occasionally means carrying out their dirty work.

Much like them, Jake and I are both swamped in darkness with no clear way out. We both exit the van, a solemn glance servicing as my goodbye to the man with a sunken face yet thick gray hair and the woman who looks young at first glance but has the gaze of an older woman in her eyes. At the surface, they seem to be totally normal people. In fact, most of the people who engage in this kind of work are. They see no other option, and no other way out of the darkness, besides making a deal with the darker parts of the world themselves.

Jake and I step into the tavern located on the outskirts of downtown D.C. It is one of only a few small businesses located on the entire street that has managed to survive the crash in consumer spending in recent years. The lampposts on the street flicker as newly shuttered stores lie empty blocks away from the heart of the capital. Groups of people, probably in their mid-twenties, stumble out of the tavern. Most are wearing clothing with neon stripes, yet there is a darkness to the black eyeshadow many of them have on and emptiness to their eyes that is foreboding.

Once I step inside, the incense connects with my nostrils immediately. A mixture of rock, electronic dance music, and rap pumps through the speakers throughout the dark tavern, creating the perfect vibe to get high and let one’s mind escape the world for as long as possible. There are no televisions on the wall, and no holographs being projected anywhere. Instead, there are a bunch of posters from old movies like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park nailed into the walls.

People are seated on fluffy, worn couches, just talking to each other, a rare sight in an increasingly digital world. After a crazy start to the week (not just for me, but for the whole country), everyone seems eager to unwind with drug-infused cocktails, desserts, and blunts as everyone mellows out. I have to resist my own urge to sit down and order a brownie from the robot that roams the floors, constantly searching for people who want more.

We have a mission to carry out. One that our lives depend on. If Chimera loses our objective for the Syndicate, well, I die, my dad dies, and Jake probably does too. And squashing that rumor and making sure those people never become problems again is the only way we can make sure we live. People may have to die in the process.

“That’s them.” Jake eyes a group sitting around a brown coffee table, all seated on bean bag chairs. They are seated in the back corner of the tavern, on the exact opposite side from where the back door is into the side alleyway where we have another vehicle stationed for us.

“Okay.” I eye them, hoping that our disguises which consist of shades and beanies to hide our hair will be enough for Jessica not to recognize us in the dim lighting. Just one glimpse of the girl’s short, yet thick black hair gives her away as the undercover server on the boat. “What do you think we should do?”

“We have to use the pills they put in our pockets.” Jake motions with his head at the number of drinks that are neon green and pink and have mist exuding off them.

“Agreed.” I stick my hand in my pocket, making sure that the two pills are still there. Brett devised a plan to wipe this incident out of everyone’s memory and from the Internet in a few minutes. He targeted an advertisement to them on My Hive, falsely advertising a drink deal at the tavern to them. Already being able to tell from the profile and past posts of Jessica Albina, the intern who posted the video of me and Jake threatening blackmail and bribing members of congress, Brett knew she would be highly likely to go to the tavern if he targeted the entire zip code with the advertisement. The deal was two drinks for the price of one, nothing too special, but more than good enough at getting dozens of people through the door on a Monday night.

By the time that Jessica and her intern friends who were also undercover on the boat got here, likely a few minutes before us, the tavern had already succumbed to the requests of dozens for the buy-one-get-one deal. They have no clue that they were set up for this entire thing.

She has no clue that we are about to make her regret that post forever.

We have the pills for a reason: to make all her friends forget about the night. And once we lure Jessica into the back alleyway behind the tavern, she will be taken to a location where Syndicate operatives working in conjunction with the cartel will interrogate her, force her to delete the post, and then have their own way of permanently wiping this experience from her mind.

“How should we get the pills into their drinks?” Jake asks.

I follow Jake to the bar. We both sit down, trying to blend in as much as possible. A robot from behind the bar immediately rolls up in front of us and asks if we need anything. We ignore it.

“I got the plan.” I grin. “This might be hard, but what if I trip and fall on the drinks, after pretending to slip on the one empty bean bag chair, and then we can go and get them new drinks and place the pills inside?”

“That’s gotta be the best plan for sure.” Jake nods. I can sense a slight fear in his tensed facial expression. “What about getting Jessica to the bathroom?”

“If we spill the drinks on her, or at least one of them, she will want to go to the bathroom to at least clean up a little bit.” A rush of excitement courses through me as the plan comes into fruition. If I think about this all a bit more, and let my emotions get into it, I would realize how disgusting this is. But there is no place for emotions here, only time to act. “I’m guessing that will work.”

“Yeah, here, order one of the cocktails, maybe the Pain Melter.” Jake motions towards one of the robots behind the bar. It rolls over in a second. It is green in color, with a black circular glass atop a cylindrical green base. The glass acts as the eyes and ears of the robot ,and the six different hand-like devices along with its own liquor tap make it versatile enough to service multiple guests at once.

“I’ll take two Pain Melters.” I glance up at the menu, none of the cocktails seeming particularly interesting to me. Drinks have never been my thing, especially ones infused with synthetic substances meant to numb one’s nerves and make one’s brain feel as if it is sitting in a comfy lounge chair. I only like when they make me feel on top of the world.

A scanning device extends from the robot. I place my finger on it, letting it read my fingerprint and immediately extract the money from my bank account, while the robot makes the drinks with its other spare hands. A few seconds later, the robot places the drinks down on the bar glowing with white LEDs and thanks me for my patronage.

The bar is so crowded that as we stand up to make our way over to the section of bean bag chairs in the far corner of the tavern, no one even bats an eye. In my mind, I know that no one will suspect anything of us. Despite the shades being a bit odd to wear at night, the rest of our outfits are completely normal. No one will suspect anything.

But it still feels like everyone is watching. It feels like they know what we are about to do.

“Let’s start joking around,” I whisper. “I can have my back turned to the bean bag chair and I will fall back onto the table and knock out their drinks, and I will do my best to throw the liquid in this one on Jessica.”

“Okay,” Jake says after chugging half the cocktail. He grips the stem of the glass so tightly that the glass itself looks like it could shatter in his hand. “Let’s do this.”

“Dude, what the hell? You can’t be drinking now.” I elbow him. “That will mess you up. I’m not even sure that drink is legal, the police here probably can’t even keep up with all the shit they have to deal with. You don’t know what they put in there.”

“Calm down, calm down.” Jake smiles, the fruity smell of the drink already effusing off his breath. “I had a little. It’s not gonna kill me.”

“I’m not worried about that. We have shit to do right now.” I eye the people seated at the bean bag chairs, all interns for senators. They are all around my age, but they don’t have young, lively looks in their eyes. They already look just as broken and hopeless as the rest of this world. All of them have pierced ears with large hoops dragging down their lobes, and are wearing all-black clothes with flashes of bright colors in various patterns on their shirts and pants. “Stop being stupid.”

“It was buy one get one free. Loosen up. Thanks for the free drink, man. I wasn’t about to turn it down.”

“You know what, I’m not even gonna get into this with you.” I chuckle. Jake is so stubborn that we could go on for hours. “Let’s just do this.”

I turn around, now feet away from them. I laugh, pretending as if he had cracked a joke. “Dude, there’s no way—” I step back, doing my best to summon the inner Hollywood actor in me and stage a believable fall onto the table.

Once the force of gravity takes hold of my body and pulls me down onto the coffee table, I let the cocktail fumble out my hand directly where Jessica is sitting. In a moment’s time my back collides against the coffee table, causing my back to be drenched in cannabis-infused liquid. One of the glasses cracks on the table, sending a hot pain into my back, while the other glasses fall to the floor, only one of the others shattering upon making impact. Jessica lets out a yelp as her lap becomes flooded with the contents of my drink.

The silence and shock from all the onlookers only last for a moment before all the people in the tavern laugh and the group of interns all yell.

“What the hell?” An Asian man with darker skin and huge arms stands up, readying to fight me despite the fact that I am still sprawled out on the coffee table in pain.

As Jessica already heads to the bathroom, cursing a number of times, the woman sitting next to her and Jake come up on the other side of me to help me up. They help lift my back covered in shattered glass off the table and support me as I stand upright.

“Thank you.” I turn to the woman, wincing in pain. I did not expect that to hurt that badly. Holy shit, this hurts.

“Of course, you better go get yourself a doctor or something now, you are bleeding a good bit.” She has olive skin and short, dark curly hair that falls right behind her neck. Her face looks warm and inviting, even a bit familiar, as she holds on to my hand to make sure I take my first step without falling again. She definitely thinks I’m drunk, but that was exactly the point.

None of the interns at the table recognize me, and in the quick moment that Jessica ran off to the bathroom, there is no way she did either. It’s time to act now.

“No, no.” I let go of her hand. “First, I have to buy you all new drinks.” I glance right at the man who yells at me, hoping he can feel my stare through my glasses.

“You don’t have to, we were almost done anyway.” She grabs my arm, the only one out of the group of four of them that protests.

“Sorry, I need to.” I smile at her. The robot steward comes up behind us to begin sweeping up the glass. I walk away immediately after saying the words, Jake following right by my side. I don’t want to even give her the chance to say thank you. What we are about to do is nothing to thank someone for.

Hopefully they blame whatever happens to them from these pills on the bar itself. When the police come here, they will have more than enough evidence to bring criminal charges against the place. At least that’s what Brett says. I pull one of the especially deep shards of glass out of my back. I do my best to ignore the sensation of blood dripping down my back onto my butt, and instead focus on ordering the drinks as fast as possible so we can still catch Jessica when she is in the bathroom.

I order them the drinks, scanning my finger again on the robot. The robot takes a few extra seconds to lay all four cocktails out in front us on the bar. I pull the pills out of my pocket. Everyone in the tavern is so far gone from the incense in the room that no one even looks when I place one pill in each of the drinks. Once they hit the liquid, they immediately dissolve inside.

Jake eyes me, and I pick up the glasses, taking the lead on the short walk back to the coffee table. I place the drinks down on their table and step back away from the group of interns who are in the middle of a conversation about what lunar cuisine would taste like.

“Thank you.” Two of them interrupt the conversation and reach out for their drinks. The robot has already finished cleaning off the area. Jake and I both nod in return, stepping away before we can get wrapped into any small talk.

We turn around and pace to the opposite side of the tavern. With this much people here, they won’t be able to tell whether we are leaving, meeting with another group of people, or kidnapping their friend.

We are about to do the latter.

At the other back corner of the tavern, a narrow, dark hallway leads to the emergency exit doors and a number of doors, including the utilities storage closet, the manager’s office, and then the restroom.

The occupied sign is lit up outside of the door, signaling that Jessica is still in there. We made it in time, but this next step will be by far the hardest. The exit door is about a dozen feet away, but the dozens of people in the dimly lit tavern are also right around the corner. If she screams, or any of us slips, someone will easily hear us and turn to look at us.

The vacant sign lights up as the lock clicks on the door. The second the doorknob turns open, I put my own hand on it and push inside. Jake follows right behind me, putting a hand over her mouth to muffle her screams.

I take my mind back to the thousands of games of Deadwave and pretend that I am in the middle of one, trying to be quiet to avoid having a pack of zombies attack me. I punch her in the head, right at the part of the skull that hurts my knuckles and hurts her own head a lot more. Her body flails, one of her legs connecting with my balls. If an insane amount of adrenaline wasn’t floating through my bloodstream right now, I would definitely throw up.

She wriggles, fighting with all her might to try and escape. I pull the hologlasses off her head and slip them in my lone tight pocket so that they don’t break. With her screams all but silenced by Jake and my own arms strangling her body, we drag her out of the bathroom and down the hallway.

Multiple times she almost escapes, the strength in her body causing all my muscles to strain to try and keep her at bay. I force open the door with my shoulder, no one in the tavern suspecting anything but a drug deal taking place in the back alleyway or someone coming out here to have a call. Everyone’s minds are so stuck on another planet that they don’t even realize the horror that happened right in front of them.

Jake still keeps a firm grip over her mouth as I lift her legs up to get them to stop kicking. I open the door to the car waiting a few feet from the door out the back of the tavern. The smell of fermenting and rotten food along with pure filth fills the ebony of the alley. I see a dark figure at the far corner of the alley, more intent on smoking his cigarette and staring at his hologlasses than seeing what is taking place right next to him.

I open the car door, both me and Jake working to shove her body into the backseat as she shakes and jerks in every which way. I throw the hologlasses inside the car and shut the door, the two masked people in the front of the car giving me a solemn nod. The car pulls away, a sharp grinding noise echoing through the night as Jessica bangs against the glass of the car window. All the sadness hits me in the moment that it becomes too late to do anything about it.

They are going to poison her and mask her death as another tragic overdose on pain pills. They are manufacturing her own suicide and using her past with depression and anxiety chronicled on social media as the cause of her end.

She’s going to die.

And I’m going to be the one responsible for her death.

Chapter 21

Today is the day that marks the beginning of the end of the current system.

Chimera Life Pods had their official rollout to the public, with facilities open in both San Diego and Washington D.C. Tens of thousands of people signed up immediately once the Life Pods went live, causing both Washington D.C. and the San Diego facility to be filled to full capacity in an instant. A waitlist with thousands of names and growing by the hour has already formed, and in various calls with my dad today he was hyped up about it.

His goal is to get millions to migrate into virtual worlds as soon as possible, and from the initial sign-up list, there seems to be nothing stopping that. There have been no laws made prohibiting such an activity, but to take everything to the next level, and to have tens of millions and maybe even hundreds of millions of people that can afford and want to live in virtual worlds, the Universal Basic Income Bill needs to be passed.

Tomorrow, we get to see if we can succeed in the first step. The last time we had to engage in a task so cruel and violent, it worked to a T. Jessica’s post was deleted before it went viral, and all the people who lay sprawled out in the tavern woke up confused, only thinking they had all blacked out.

But Jessica died. Her story was written off as yet another of thousands of suicides being committed by young people across the country each month. Her story really ends with a murder, though—a murder that I am responsible for.

And the sound of her banging against the car window still haunts me. Every hour I think about her, and I think about what I did. I killed her, all over a stupid post on social media. She will be the first in a series of silent deaths.

Jake and I both have to kidnap and hold hostage five representatives tomorrow for the duration of the vote, or at the very least scare them into not showing up. Many representatives have come forth and accepted our bribe since the night of the river cruise, but not enough woke up and took ten million dollars to get the bill passed. The job of ensuring its passage has been graciously handed us. I get to do pretty much whatever I want to try and achieve the sole goal: to get the Universal Basic Income Bill passed.

But I don’t know why I want to do this anymore.

That’s exactly why I’m here now, in this game of Deadwave with both Riva and Jake. None of us feel like having any sort of official celebration for the launching of Life Pods. We don’t even know how to feel about anything anymore.

“This still feels so weird.” Jake’s avatar sits atop the air conditioning storage unit on the roof of the abandoned lab. The growls of dozens of zombies can be heard echoing in the three-story building below, and dozens more are visible walking around the shopping center littered with broken-down cars and shopping carts toppled over in the middle of the streets.

All of us hang out the roof of the building, not wanting to engage with the zombies down below. Jake and I always used to do this, especially back in our days in high school when both of us would be stuck home every Friday night because no one would ever invite us out to go anywhere.

In this place, our lowly social status never mattered, though. Deadwave instantly transports my mind to a land of peace and serenity. It’s not the game itself, it’s the feeling of everything around me falling apart and knowing that I’m not alone. The same feeling inside me is what encapsulates the world. And my mission to put this world back together, and simultaneously put myself back together, has always been what drives me to wake up every day, raring to go.

“I know what you mean.” I sigh, sitting back on the ledge of the roof behind me. A number of cracks and water damage make the top of the building look like it is about to collapse, and in some cases where large holes dug into the stucco, it already has.

The beauty about playing offline games like this is that we can all enjoy our time together, almost like we really are hanging out on the roof of a broken-down genetics research lab in the middle of a suburban shopping center.

“Things must feel weird for you,” Riva says. She sits a few feet away on the roof from me, facing up towards the sky so that she can watch the clouds drift by. “I can’t imagine being able to do this after everything.”

“Hey, stop bringing it up,” Jake says. His avatar, which has blue skin, stares down at Riva from the top of the shack full of broken air conditioners. Jake now lives with both me and Riva, the three of us living in an apartment in the heart of downtown D.C. Riva has been busy every day with streaming, and of course acting as the brand ambassador for Chimera, but in the last few days she has started to question it all. “We’ve all been through a lot and had to do some crazy shit. It’s not any of our faults.”

Jake eyes me. He has been less distant lately, opening up more and joking around more about life, but everything in the past, even our own shared childhood, has been off limits. Instead, he’d rather talk about his desire to work with his big brother, Drew, to launch Chimera into the stratosphere and then move to some foreign country and help the Syndicate make inroads in Latin America. It all sounds like bullshit, like it’s all his excuse for waking up at five each morning to research on the Internet and staying up till one in the morning.

It’s all a lie. And I haven’t figured out his real motivation yet for wanting to help the Syndicate so much or even be so close to me again after he is too pained to even talk about what happened. I haven’t figured out what both he and my dad know that they are both so keen on keeping from me. There’s another reason why my dad almost got killed, and why they tracked me down for all those years. He must have done some awful things that Drew alluded to, and that night still haunts my every dream.

I am still being lied to.

“You’re right, I’m sorry, causing five people to fall off a cliff and die isn’t bad at all,” Riva says. She has been pretty annoyed with him since the second he walked in the door the day we moved in, stating that Chimera (my dad) is requiring the three of us to live together. Part of me knows the Syndicate is doing this for our own protection, and part of me also knows my dad doesn’t want me to be living alone with a girl when I should be focusing on building an empire.

However, Riva wants nothing to do with him. She doesn’t feel safe living with him. She reminds me every single day that he wants to hurt me, that she can sense it, and that I need to watch out.

I haven’t listened to her. I just wanted my brother back. And I don’t care if things are messed up. He’s the only one who truly gets me. He’s the only one who has been with me from the beginning.

“The judge disagreed with your statement. If I killed them, I’d be in jail. So, take that.”

“People like you always get everything to go their way.” The disdain in her voice sends shiver down my spine. “Don’t you understand? It’s part of being a white man. You would be in jail right now if you looked like me, if you looked like most of this world. It’s just because you had a good lawyer from the salary Sam paid you to be his manager. A lawyer who was also a white man.”

“Riva, please let’s not go there.” I raise a hand to cut off Jake.

“Are you kidding me?” She turns to me now. “You are gonna shut me down after I am sticking up for you, after I’m calling him out on his bullshit? Look, I know guys are simpletons sometimes, but I didn’t know it could ever be like this.”

“What do you mean?” Jake and I both respond at the same time, so far doing an awful job at disproving her point.

“Look, Jake, I don’t know how in the hell you got out of any charges, or even why James would want you to help out with the lobbying work Chimera is doing. It doesn’t even make sense to me.” She pauses, and I bite my tongue, feeling guilty for having to feed her a bunch of lies. All she knows is that the group of people that tortured us is off us for now because they want some of the money that Chimera generates, which means we need it to be successful. We can’t tell her anything else. Or else she will have to join or die. And I don’t want that for her, or anybody. Not after what she’s been through. “But even though all that happened, I don’t understand for the life of me how both of you could go on and work together and act like friends as if nothing happened. Are you seriously becoming the zombies in this game?”

“No, we aren’t,” I say. “Sometimes you gotta do shit you’re not happy with, just because. And not allow yourself to feel anything, because if you do, you know you will collapse. My life has been like that for years, I’m a pro at this thing.”

Jake butts in before Riva can talk. “At the end of the day, I still love Sam. I still love him. And I know he loves me too and that’s why we can get through this. When there’s no way to come to terms with the past, you gotta move on.”

“I… I love Sam too.” A rush of adrenaline flows through me at her words. “And I don’t want anything to happen to him. I don’t want you to hurt him again, and I’m scared. I’m scared for my dad. I’m scared for the both of you. I’m scared for me and all the death threats I’ve been getting online from people against Chimera. I’m scared my career is gonna be destroyed. I’m scared for this country’s future. I’m scared that none of this is going to work, when a few days ago I felt like Chimera was the answer to everything. But then I realized the truth, that this is all so fucked up.”

She begins crying, her avatar’s body shaking with emotion.

We shut down the game, the virtual world around me disappearing in a second, and I rip off my helmet. I walk across the carpeted living room of the apartment where she sits on a leather chair. In the darkness, her figure looks almost invisible.

“It’s gonna be okay.” I hold Riva in my arms, trying to bring her body so much warmth that she will stop crying and feel safe.

“No, it’s not.” She takes a deep breath. “You saw those protests. You heard the gunshots. You saw the tears in people’s eyes. Everything is falling apart. And it doesn’t matter how our lives end up because of Chimera. I don’t think this is gonna be enough to save it.”

Chapter 22

This has to work.

It has to freaking work perfectly. If it doesn’t, everything will be lost. The UBI Bill will fail, Chimera will go under criminal prosecution, I’ll be put in jail, and yeah, a lot of other awful shit I don’t want to think about. I have to think about the good.

I have to think about winning, until I bleed the feeling and become the result.

The back door swings open, someone inside the house letting their dog into the backyard. I take a deep breath, bracing for it to be some massive Rottweiler that I’ll have to try and fight off. Oh, thank every star in the galaxy. I smile, laughing out loud at the sight of the brown shih tzu no taller than my ankles that bounds down the back steps of the home.

It isn’t a threat at all, and it certainly won’t stop me from going inside the house and subduing the representative inside. His name is Ahmed Baqri, the only Muslim congressmen. Overall, he seems like a really cool guy, and someone who is in this political game for the right reasons. That’s exactly why no one could convince him to change his view on Chimera and the UBI Bill, despite him opposing the New Age Initiative. And that’s exactly why I now have to hold him captive here for the next few hours while the vote is done taking place.

I’m wearing the outfit of someone who is about to steal an artifact from the Museum of Natural History. I am wearing a black jumpsuit that covers my entire body, with a leather waistband and holstered pistol. A black mask with tiny holes for my eyes and mouth covers my face, and I have black gloves on my hands. Chained to the back of my waistband are handcuffs, and next to the holster of my pistol is pepper spray to blind the man, along with a syringe and needle with a sleeping medication that will knock him out and make him forget his last fifteen minutes awake.

A man in the Syndicate who operates an underground international assassin agency and trains the kind of people the MI6 and CIA use set me up with the equipment, and also hooked Jake up with an equally versatile arsenal. We are tasked to subdue and prevent two representatives from attending the vote at all costs. Out of the five that we needed as of yesterday not to attend, two confirmed late last night they would not be attending due to personal issues (which really means the threats and sometimes real actions of ZOnion members stalking them, hacking their bank accounts, and even protesting and attempting to raid their houses made them uncomfortable to openly vote their opposition to Chimera). Then one representative, at the last minute, changed her mind and decided to go to her daughter’s wedding in New Hampshire, which means that only two more unlucky representatives have to be held up in their houses all day long.

That leaves Jake and I to go out and do our usual job, servicing the dirty work of the Syndicate and Chimera, which this time means trying to sneak past an array of guards both inside and outside the house so that I can deliver the drug into a vein in the neck of the congressman and get the hell out of here before one of the guards, hired for personal protection from ZOnion (he is one of the most harassed targets by ZOnion in the country), grabs me and exposes my identity to the world.

If I’m caught, the Syndicate can’t save me. It will ruin Chimera, and it will destroy the little stability left in the Syndicate, especially with rumors of a coup by a number of brothers on the council. If we fail, brothers inside the Syndicate may be emboldened to destroy it.

That’s why I have to succeed today. My life counts on it. This whole world counts on it.

He’s gotta be up there. I look up at the one window on the second story of his home, deducing that it must be the master bedroom he sleeps in with his wife. Yes, I know he has a wife; in fact, I know almost all publicly available information about him. Even though it’s eight in the morning now, I stayed up all night after Riva fell asleep in my arms. The second she fell asleep, I got my hologlasses and began researching to find out more about the man whose life I’d be permanently altering the next day.

I learned that he and his wife had three miscarriages over a series of five years before adopting a child from Thailand. Before being a politician, starting off in the Virginia state house just six years ago, he was an environmental attorney for a non-profit who fought against large oil conglomerates and polluting factories. Yeah, he’s like a modern-day saint, and after finding this out, it’s only making it harder for my sleep-deprived mind to bring myself to actually do this. I thought I’d find out he is just another political tool in Washington, like the ones who chased us off that boat. I thought the research would make it easier to sneak into his home in Alexandria and assault him, but now I know I’m taking this moment away from someone who deserves it. These are the moments that define one’s legacy. And I have to leave a permanent stain on his.

I tiptoe through the mulch bed right behind the house. Both the bushes in the mulch and the grass in the tiny yard itself are turning brown and beginning to wilt as the first winter’s frost approaches quickly. I barely have any cover from anyone inside. All it will take is one of his guards spotting me on the cameras in his backyard or simply looking out the kitchen window to catch me. From the intelligence that Justin collected, his wife starts work at eight in the morning, which means she is already out of the house and their kid is at daycare.

As long as I can take care of the guards inside his house, stationed there by the U.S. Government to protect him against a number of death threats, I’ll be able to knock him out for the day.

I press my back up against the white wall of the house. It is a neo-colonial style with a huge brick chimney that leads up to the roof. I have to be able to shimmy myself up that chimney so that I can break through the window into his room.

The dog has a different idea, though.

After it finishes peeing in the grass, it sniffs around, noticing me within seconds. The little fluffball goes apeshit instantly, running at me as if it is some violent attack dog that will tear my arms off. The cute mat of fur can’t even touch me if it wants to, but it calls the attention of its owner inside, who opens the door.

The moment I hear the click of the door handle opening again on the back porch, I dash across the mulch. I pull the pistol out of the holster in my pocket and slide down in one smooth motion right next to the deck, so that Ahmed can’t see me until he comes right above me.

I immediately abort the idea of getting into the house through the second story, and instead focus on luring him as close to me as possible so that I can deliver the drug into his neck and get the hell out of here. I have no hologlasses on me, the Syndicate leaving me on my own and wanting nothing to be traced back to them in case I get caught by the police. Thus, I have no way to even know where I am, or if there are any developments in the vote. After all, I have no clue if someone else is choosing not to attend, making this unnecessary, and likewise someone could also be choosing to attend or change their vote at the last minute, making this all useless.

All I know is that I followed a set of directions I memorized that led me from the random drop-off location in the middle of a suburban neighborhood over the brown picket fence of the congressman’s house. From the multiple black SUVs in the driveway, I know this is the right house, but besides that, I am completely lost. And I’m alone, waiting on the side of his deck feet away from the house, wondering with every breath if this plan is actually crazy enough that it might work.

“Cha Cha, c’mon back inside.” Ahmed’s voice echoes through the brisk morning air. For a day in late October, it is actually rather warm out, but that still doesn’t change the fact that I am having to fight the desire to shiver from the combination of fear and adrenaline.

“Hey, Cha Cha!” he says, this time a bit louder. The echo of his footsteps against the wooden patio causes the thin layer of wood to vibrate against my back.

Cha Cha still does not respond to his request. The dog continues to bark at me, doing its best to sound ferocious, with its teeth bared and large eyes locked right on me.

“Is anyone out here?” Ahmed takes a hesitant step in my direction. He knows I’m here now, but he’s not close enough for me to pop up and subdue him.

“Hey!” He turns around and runs back inside. I have to hold back from cursing out loud as he slams the door shut, leaving his dog out here with me. People are gonna be out here ready to shoot me. I can’t have any blood on my hands if there doesn’t need to be, and I certainly can’t have myself dead.

I stand up, the dog now losing its mind as it runs forward towards me. For such a little thing, it is very confident.

I sprint back across the mulch, hearing the piercing noise of glass shattering as a bullet heads right towards me. It misses my trajectory by a few feet, only causing a few particles of glass to hit my mask and jumpsuit and fall of me. By the time a second gunshot unloads in my direction, I have already run around the side of the house, out of view from the window.

If there’s one thing I can do in life, it is running as fast as I can away from things. I’m finally thankful for that gift now.

Cha Cha comes up behind me and bites me in the ankle, its fangs actually causing an intense pain to shoot up my leg. “You son of a bitch!” I scream, cursing again under my breath as I open the latch to the fence on the side of his house and slam it behind me. It takes me another second to realize that little Cha Cha likely is for real the son of a bitch, and how pathetic it is that I let something less than a tenth the size of me inflict such pain upon me.

Another bullet blasts through the window on the side of the house, the entire window cracking upon its impact but refusing to fall. Loud screams echo on either side of the house, telling me to drop my weapon and surrender. Police are already on the way here, and likely federal agents aren’t going to be too far behind.

At the surface, it seems like I’m definitely screwed. And you know what, I probably am. But I’m so deep in now, there’s no way I’m getting out, so I might as well keep digging my hole deeper until I can finally come out the other side. My genius idea to begin that process involves climbing onto the roof.

I jump on top of the air conditioner vent on the side of the house, the bullets pouring out of the window not able to be angled in my direction. Then, I use the height from the air conditioner vent to grab the first layer of shingles, the urgency of the moment enabling me to complete nearly a full muscle-up onto the roof, which is something that should be impossible with someone of my body type.

I stand up on the roof, pulling the gun back out of its holster and preparing to shoot anyone in sight with it. Ahmed’s personal security guards storm to the side of the house, one of them already trying to climb up onto the air conditioner vent to follow me. Now everything has gone to utter shit. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to get close enough to Ahmed to stab his neck with a needle.

I’m going to have to shoot him.

I run to the middle of the roof, which has the white wall of the second floor poking out of it. A lone bedroom is all that marks the second floor of this house, and it corners me in a small section of the roof, making my own death imminent if I don’t do something.

If he’s not dead in two minutes, I will be. I grip the pistol tightly in my hand, my palms sweating so much that I’m afraid I’ll struggle to have good aim. Somehow, the yelping of the dog persists in my ears above the chaos of everything else. It’s my freaking answer.

I run to the edge of the roof in the backyard, the craziest idea I have ever had coming to my mind. I have to hold this dog hostage.

I jump off the roof down into the withering bushes, the once green leaves either brown or on the floor. My ankle cracks on the way down, and the hot sensation of blood pouring out of my bite wound trickles down my feet. Just as I expect, the dog runs back immediately towards me, hungry to try and take out my other ankle.

I don’t let that happen. I pick it up as the guards who had run to the side of the house burst into the backyard. By now, I can tell there are exactly three of them. All armed, and all wearing suits to escort the representative around in style. I can take them on easily, but in the far distance, I can hear the sirens of the police cars. I need to get going in the next minute in order to make it to the rendezvous location in time.

The dog yaps at me, trying to tear off my hand as I pick it up and emerge from the bush with my gun pointed at it. Every single guard looks at me with a confused and slightly shocked face as I walk into the open backyard fearlessly, staring at each of them the entire time to make sure they don’t touch the trigger. They must have instructed Ahmed to stay inside as they all tried to eliminate what they thought was a pesky intruder. That’s why I smile the second I connect with Ahmed’s teary eyes peering at me through the window, holding his shih tzu in my arm and with my other hand pointing a gun at it.

“Drop your guns!” I yell, expecting them to listen, but they still all have their pistols raised at me, closing in by the second. They aren’t afraid of me, yet they haven’t shot me yet. They know the power I have.

Cha Cha continues freaking out in my arm, yet it is more than easy to subdue, with my hand clamped around its jaw and body pressed up against my chest so it doesn’t fall.

“Don’t come closer, or I’ll shoot!”

They all freeze. They must know how precious this dog is to this man. After all, Cha Cha is a dog that could become famous on social media for its cute looks. That’s exactly what I plan to use to my advantage.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody.” I begin backing up towards the fence at the back of the yard, still with the gun pointed right at Cha Cha. “I want the dog. Now drop your guns and let me leave.”

“You can’t take the dog,” one of the burly men says, his demeanor surprisingly calm given the situation.

“Then I will kill it,” I say, hovering the gun right near its head.

“No!” Ahmed opens the door, breaking down in tears as he dashes to the patio. “Drop her, you psychopath!”

“This dog needs to be correctly leveraged to make money.” My voice booms off the house. Ahmed comes closer, his body beginning to be within reach between the wall of guards a few dozen feet in front of me.

“I’ll give you money.” He steps forward and drops down to his knees on the grass, in clear firing range. His curly black hair still looks freshly wet from his shower, and he still has shaving cream on. “I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t take my baby.”

“I can’t make a deal in this kind of hostile environment.” I lower my voice, trying to seem more mysterious, although in reality, I have no idea what I’m doing. All I know is the sirens are less than a mile away, and I need to capitalize on this chaos now. I stop backing up as I feel the presence of the fence inches from me. “Drop your guns and I’ll drop mine. See, I’ll even lower mine now.”

I turn the barrel of my pistol away from the head of the dog, knowing well enough that this one simple action could mark my death.

“Drop your guns!” Ahmed screams at the guards. They don’t move at first, their pistols still raised directly at my head. “I said, drop your guns!”

They finally listen; he is their boss, after all. They have no idea I’m the one in control.

I direct the barrel in the direction of Ahmed and channel all my years of Deadwave experience into the one bullet I fire at him. I toss the dog and gun onto the ground and grab the top of the fence before I can even register where the bullet connects with Ahmed.

From the piercing screaming, all I know is that it connected. But in the same moment as he screams, all three guards fire their bullets at me. I anticipated this, and upon reaching the top of the fence, I jerk my body to the left.

Only one of the bullets manages to connect with the top of my shoulder. I don’t even feel it, though; my survival mode is kicked into such high gear that pain has become a thing of the past. My only thought is how I can make it into a future.

I throw my body over the fence, the wood tearing through the jumpsuit and causing dozens of scrapes to slice through my skin. Another one of the bullets from the continuing gunfire connects with the bottom of my foot as my body falls sideways onto the floor of the woods below.

The sirens now sound over a hundred feet away as the police cars pull up to the house and a bunch of officers descend upon the scene. I got out in time, but I still have to run away before they can catch me.

I claw upward, my body getting up from the dirt floor in remarkable time, given the fact that death is so close. It’s not like the hundreds of times in Deadwave when the deflating feeling of seeing my health go down consumes me. This is the sensation of knowing your entire existence may be ripped away from you in a second, and the insane surge of energy that accompanies life in its most desperate fight for survival.

I’m fighting, that’s for sure.

I sprint forward, ahead of the guards who climb over the fence in pursuit of me. I turn left, hopping over another fence into a backyard that backs up to the tiny patch of woods in the middle of one of the most densely populated suburbs in the nation. Every sensation amalgamates into one loud, punishing white noise in my mind as the roar of the ambulance couples with the police sirens, gunshots, and screaming.

I vault over yet another fence, this one above my waist and into another backyard. Unlike Ahmed’s house, this yard actually has a dog that can take me down in a fight, a massive German Shepherd. It must know what I have done, because it wastes no time tracking me down on my path and jumping at me. I don’t try to fight it off. Instead, I climb on top of the playset in the backyard and then use the height as a platform to jump off over the fence into yet another backyard. By the time I make it up the slide, I have already lost the ferocious dog, leaving it to everyone who is trailing behind me.

One more turn through the gate of another backyard and through another patch of woods and I can see the dark minivan sitting in between two houses in the middle of the street. The windows are tinted so I can’t see the driver, but I take my chances, figuring that the likelihood of our rendezvous spot being compromised is almost zero.

A police drone launches into the sky above, and the sounds of the dogs barking and sirens blaring ring in my ears until I open the door to the backseat of the car and dive inside. I look out the window, none of the officers or guards appearing to the side of either of these houses in the seconds we pull away.

They didn’t catch me. I escaped—for now.

I sigh, connecting eyes with the driver of the newer minivan rigged to be manually driven so that it can be used for illegal purposes. The first thing that makes me feel a bit of relief from the numb sensation all over my body is taking off my mask and finally allowing my sweaty face to breathe. The magnitude of the situation penetrates my mind.

I succeeded in the mission. I may have just saved the UBI Bill and all the hopes for Chimera’s future, for my future, and for the world’s future.

I survived. But I feel dead inside.

I fucked up, and no mistakes are for free.

Chapter 23

The darkness scares me, but I can’t escape it.

I look into the ebony, keeping my arm around Riva as we both lie on my bed, relaxing in the presence of one another. Most nights we like to relax by playing Deadwave together and killing zombies in a virtual world, but tonight we are both too tired for that. Tonight, we both want to lie on each other and feel each other’s breaths and heartbeats ebbing through one another.

It is beautiful feeling, being this interconnected with another person. But even now I can’t bring my mind to enjoy the moment.

All I can think about is that I nearly killed a man. All I can think about is how fucked up this is. Immediately after Jake and I executed our tasks of preventing the representatives from attending the vote, the Syndicate moved on to our next task. Even when we asked, no one seemed to want to help protect us from law enforcement, and no one wanted to explain why it was necessary for me to shoot a man and put him in critical condition; everyone treats it as if it’s just the cost of doing business. Unlike Jake’s operation, which went relatively smoothly as far as drugging and kidnapping a politician could go, my blunder is all over the news, with local police and federal law enforcement already launching a major investigation to find the assailant of Ahmed.

That assailant is me.

And that frightens me. It scares me so much that I can’t even talk. My body can only sit here in the silence, listening to Riva’s breath and the dull echo of the holograph in the living room playing an action movie Jake and my dad decided to watch. My dad is actually in town the next few days for the same reason that I will soon be leaving it. He is here to conduct a series of Senate hearings on Chimera Life Pods and meeting with the Federal Drug Administration. The FDA commissioner is actually a member of the Syndicate, but like the men who destroyed the main lodge on White’s Island, he is against the goals of the council. He has proved unwilling to cooperate with the Syndicate, Chimera, or even with council members threatening his life.

Now Jake and I have to make good on the threat and take his daughter’s life while she is at his home in Lake Lure, North Carolina, suffering from terminal brain cancer. We have to kill her, and by doing so, we might tear the Syndicate apart.

I feel sick to my stomach. Just knowing I am supposed to leave here in two days and travel to another state with the sole mission of delivering a lethal poison into one’s bloodstream makes me want to puke and cry. I don’t know if I can do this anymore.

Yet I don’t know how to get out of this. I don’t even know how to begin telling my dad that I can’t do this anymore. That I can’t keep killing people. That I can’t keep blocking out my emotions. That I can’t keep doing the dirty work for men who will always have more power than me.

But part of me stops myself every time I want to get up from bed and tell him. I can’t let him down. I can’t let him think that I’m not good enough to do this. All I want him to do is believe in me. I know how much this means to him, Chimera succeeding, and I can’t bring myself to tell him how I feel. I can’t let his angry, disappointed face from my childhood come back to haunt me.

I need to be tough. I need to tell myself that I’m doing this so that my dad can survive. I need to tell myself that there isn’t another way.

But every time I repeat those words in my mind, I know that I am lying to myself.

And I don’t know what to do.

“You really must not be feeling it tonight.” Riva’s hand runs down my thigh. She still has no idea about anything that has been happening. She even thinks that Jake and I are leaving to go to North Carolina for a retreat with senators. Every time I’m next to her, the anxiety that she will find out and the fear of how she will react corrode my every thought.

“Yeah, it was just a really long day.”

“You have had lots of those lately.” She shifts so that her body lies on top of me. In the darkness of the room, I can barely make out the details of her face. We have the door shut, Riva and I fully enjoying what should be a private moment out of view from my dad and Jake (it still feels really weird that they are here and we are alone, but the feeling of Riva’s body let me adjust to that quickly). But I still don’t feel as if we are alone. I feel like people are watching, and I can’t do anything to stop it.

“It’s been a tough last few weeks for all of us. It’s been odd to adjust to the Deadwave lifestyle changing to that of a political lobbyist in Washington.” I mean a freaking murderous political thug. “It’s by far the most messed-up career path one could have.”

“I don’t know. I’d say porn stars turned into actors in family movies is just as crazy, but that happens.”

“Fine,” I grin. “I’ll give you that. But either way it’s stressful. With everything falling apart in this country, I feel like I have so much on my shoulders, and I don’t know if I can keep carrying it.”

“Well, why don’t I help you take some weight off?” She leans in, her lips grazing over my neck before they make their way to my lips. My body tingles with energy as she moves up and down on top of me in a slow, gentle sliding motion.

I sigh, the stress cooped up in me from the last few days finally escaping me for a moment. Riva knows just where to touch me and where to put her mouth to make me feel best, and I know every way to make her feel like she is on another planet too.

But the moment she put her hands at the bottom of my hoodie, readying to take it off, I pull back from her lips. “It’s cold,” I whisper, probably the most stupid excuse I can come up with to keep my shirt on, but it is my first thought.

“I’ll keep you warm.” She laughs, then kisses me on my cheek.

“No, like seriously.” I pause, trying to figure out some bullshit to say that would even halfway make sense. She can’t see all the scratches from the glass on my body. She can’t see what I’ve really been doing. “I think I need to get up and get some water. I don’t feel well all of a sudden.”

“Oh, okay.” She shifts to the side so that I can get up. “Well, I’ll go out there with you. I’ve got nothing better to do in here.”

“Okay.” I smile.

I let my feet touch the carpet and stand up. I hold Riva’s hand, refusing to look her in the eyes as we both open the door and emerge into the living room of the apartment. I know the second I look into her eyes, I will tear up. I feel like I’m betraying something that I don’t even deserve to have. I feel like I love her, yet I know I can’t show it.

I know I have no choice but to lie to her. And that hurts more than anything.

“Wow, I was wondering what all those noises were in there.” Jake smiles at us as we both walk out of the room. Knowing him, he has been saving that line in the back of his mind for this very moment. Reno, my Siberian Husky, wags his tail and rubs his body against my leg the moment I emerge from the bedroom.

“Oh, well, okay then.” My dad speaks up now. He is sitting on a mini hammock that hangs from a hook in the ceiling. “Let’s change this conversation, before anyone here throws up or tears their eyes out.”

“Yes, agreed.” I reach into one of the cabinets and let water from a filter on the faucet run into my glass. No one really knows if these filters work. People are still dying from the pollutants in the water, but for some reason it seems safer to live with these white, dinghy pieces of plastic than without them.

“Well, we can talk about the good news,” Riva says. “It’s so awesome that the UBI Bill got passed through the House today. I found out while in the middle of filming for an advertisement, and everyone at the Chimera office here was freaking out.”

“Yeah, we are all very excited about it.” My dad keeps his eyes focused on the holograph at the center of the room as he responds. Now that the UBI Bill is passed through the House, it has to get passed through the Senate, which Justin and our bribes can take care of, and signed by President Baron. Brett plans to mobilize ZOnion to disseminate lies about Baron’s administration siphoning funds from the New Age Initiative to purchase real estate. He hopes after millions of people call for impeachment, that President Baron will sign the UBI Bill to appease them, and when this moment occurs, it will mark victory for us.

“Crazy how it happened, though.” Riva sits down on a stool at the granite counter. “A representative was shot and couldn’t go. That was likely the deciding vote. I can’t even imagine doing that, and especially being on the run too.”

An odd sensation overcomes me at the moment she utters the words. The anxiety spikes inside me, and the terror I have been trying to repress, but miserably failing at, overwhelms my mind in an instant. My heart rate quickens, beads of sweat pour down my face, and a painful feeing sits at the bottom of my gut. She has no idea. She has no freaking idea that I am about to collapse. I am losing my mind.

“I can’t do this anymore.” An odd soreness shoots through my chest. “I can’t.” I lean against the counter, the energy inside me deflating. I’m tired of pretending to be the tough guy. I’m done with telling myself I don’t feel any of this. I feel all of it. And I’m disgusted, I’m angry, and I’m scared. I hate myself for what I did, but what makes me even more scared is knowing that I am capable of doing more.

“What are you talking about?” Riva stands up and puts her arm around my side, more than a little confused by the distressed expression on my face.

“I shot someone today.” The words spill out of me, even with everything in my body trying to hold it back. The entire Syndicate now has a recording of me admitting my crime. The council will punish me, my dad will scream at me, but I don’t even care anymore. I can’t keep living with this guilt. I can’t keep living a lie.

“What—” Her voice cuts off. Her arm peels away from my body as the holograph silences. Every ounce of oxygen feels like it has been sucked from the room, and now I’m sitting here, struggling to breathe.

“I made a man’s face fall into the whip cream on top of his pancakes.” Jake has an almost humorous tone as he says it. “Ah, he was like that for hours before people noticed something was very wrong and called the EMT to his house. Is it weird that was kind of fun?”

“Jake, please.” My dad stands up from the hammock. He motions with his hands to increase the intensity of the lights. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but shut up. And Sam, what?” My dad walks towards me. Something in his eyes tells me he expected this to happen, and as always is taking the side of the Syndicate instead of helping me.

“Stop acting like you don’t know.” I look up from the counter, tears pouring down my face. “I shot that man for you!”

“What is going on?” Riva backs away from all of us. She has an uneasy look in her eyes. She is still trying to figure out whether this is some sick joke or not. I wish I could tell her how serious this is. How deep I am in shit that I can’t ever get out of. It is hitting me now, the realization that I’m not a member of the Syndicate. These people own me and can easily replace my body with someone else next year. I am their pawn. And they don’t care if I’m destroyed.

We are blood brothers in a pact to deceive the world together. What they don’t tell us is that they are lying to us all the same.

“Stop.” Jake now stands up, shaking his head so hard, his neck must be on the verge of snapping. I can’t tell whether he is mad at me, my dad, or himself. “Don’t say another word, James. Don’t spill out another lie. I know the truth. You have lied to me and Sam our whole lives. Our entire lives! And you have known that they told me, you have known that I know the truth, and haven’t even acknowledged, never mind apologized for ruining every bit of my happiness.”

My dad walks towards him, steam practically pouring from his ears. Then he explodes. “If you say one more word, I will—”

“You can’t touch me, so stop pretending like you can. I’m not five years old, you don’t scare me anymore. You need me. And one day I will make you regret what you did.” Jake inches towards the door and I stare at him in shock. “You made me hate the only person I have ever loved, my freaking brother. And as much as I want to love him again, I just can’t. I can’t. The truth cleansed me, and one day it will bury you.”

Jake motions to the door, my dad for once not able to come back with his fists or words that have even more fire power behind them. Instead he stands there in shock, and for the first time, I can see the lies that he wraps around my existence beginning to unravel.

Then, two loud knocks pound against the door. Reno barks immediately and sprints towards the door. From the stern voice that echoes through the apartment, I already know who it is.

I have a feeling they found their missing assailant.

Chapter 24

“Federal Bureau of Investigation at your door, open up immediately.”

Chills run down my spine the second the knocks reverberate throughout the apartment. Each word sends another shot of fear coursing through me, until my heart edges toward the level of collapsing. I wipe the tears from underneath my eyes, trying to gather my composure and appear calm, even though I have every reason in the world to be sprawled on the floor, hyperventilating.

Riva grabs me, her mouth wide open and eyes staring at the door, anticipating it to burst open. I squeeze her hand once before letting go, trying to communicate everything to her with the touch of my body. I want to write a little love note for her, but instead of poetic words being inside, I want it to be full of all the bullshit I will have to tell her for the rest of my time knowing her.

It’s too late for that now. I don’t know if I will ever see her again.

“FBI. Open up, or we will come in!”

I glance at my dad. Even he looks a bit shaken up about this, which is saying something given that he has dealt with decades of repressing his life’s horrors, starting with his abusive father, and has had a state of constant anxiety become his normal life. No one in the Syndicate has any idea they are onto us this fast. This might be the end of everything.

Jake eyes all of us, looking for permission as he places his hand on the door handle.

“Don’t.” My dad kicks into action. “Let me go out there. This doesn’t seem like they are raiding our house or making any arrests. I’ll go talk to them.”

He opens the door, shutting it quickly behind him as he emerges onto the rough, blue carpet that covers the floors in the apartment building. The second he closes the door, Riva turns to me, both distraught and furious.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Fuck.” I rub my hands over my face, turning away from her. “Fuck, fuck.”

“Yeah, big time.” Jake leans back on the small desk near the front door. He doesn’t even look surprised by this whole ordeal. It’s like he expected this to happen.

“Did you tip them off?” I narrow my eyes at him. I have to hold myself back from screaming at him. If I yell, the agents outside will know something is up.

“What could he tip them off about?” Riva stays a foot in front of me, a panicked tone to her voice.

“I shot the representative,” I whisper. “I’m the guy they are looking for.”

“Don’t freaking say that with them right outside,” Jake hisses, refraining from screaming. “And no, I didn’t tip them off, I’m not trying to get killed.”

“You just said you hate me.” I step to the side of Riva, so that I can have a direct line of view at him. In moments like these, the kitchen with its ten-foot island and modest size feels extremely cramped with the tension between us.

“I hate you because I was a mistake. It’s not your fault.” Tears well up in Jake’s eyes. Something menacingly dark overtakes him in the moment, and he closes his eyes, a traumatic pain visible in his contorted facial expression. “He lied to us about everything.”

“Can we please back up a second?” Riva throws her hands in the air. “You shot someone?”

“Hey, Sam, Jake.” Dad’s voice cuts through the tension in the air as he opens the door halfway and sticks his head through. “C’mon outside, they have a few questions for you.”

I exhale, trying to reset all the anxious thoughts in my mind and ready myself to either be carted away to jail for a very long time or convince them of an alternate truth. If I tell myself it’s an alternate truth, it makes me feel better about lying. But the second I grab my hologlasses off the counter and emerge from the door out into the dimly lit hallway, most lights being turned off at this time of night to conserve energy, I have the urge to collapse onto the floor.

Two agents are standing in front of me wearing dark, navy blue jackets with the yellow letters FBI on their chest. They have black shades on, likely to record our conversation, and they have a pistol holstered to their waists, along with a radio and a number of other devices to call in backup law enforcement. If any two men can show up at your door and instantly cause you to pee your pants, it is these two.

“Samuel Bennet and Jake Pickering, correct?” one of the agents says as we emerge. He has the word Hernández, what I assume to be a last name, on his uniform.

“Yes, I’m Sam.”

“And I’m Jake.” We both respond nearly in unison, trying to hide the nervousness from our voices. The adrenaline kicks in, and the will to hide my anxiety—hide the truth—burns inside me stronger than ever. I can do this. I let the thought echo in my head, but I’m not sure about anything anymore.

The guilt is dragging me down, and as much as I want to have the cool, collected demeanor of my father, my emotions want to take over and let me succumb to my punishment. Mistakes are never free.

“If you can both scan your fingers on this reader right here,” the other agent, with the last name Martin, speaks up in a high-pitched tone. He is extremely ripped, but the warm look in his brown eyes makes me feel safe. Unlike his counterpart, Hernández, he appears much younger, with a fresh face unaware of the hardships to come. Such a face is a rarity nowadays.

I comply, the thin sheet of glass lighting up red upon my touch.

Red, that is not a good color. Please don’t be—

“So, we are here to ask you both some questions.” The terror inside me dips a bit as I realize I’m not going to be taken away in handcuffs, at least not yet. Hernández speaks as Martin processes our fingerprints into the system. A sigh of relief courses through me when the same red color appears for Jake. “We have already talked to James, so we understand a bit of what has been going on, but we have some questions for the both of you, specifically questions related to the night of the sixteenth.”

Martin nods at Hernández and puts the finger scanner back into his pocket. Hernández runs a hand through the dark-gray beard coating his caramel skin. “Would one of you like to describe to us what happened the night of the sixteenth?”

I love how they phrase it as a question even though we are forced to answer no matter what. A message flashes across my hologlasses on the Syndicate network. Normally, law enforcement agencies have access to all the messages we send and receive, but the Syndicate network is hidden even from their eyes. It is a message from my father to Jake and I.

Dad: You have a constitutional right not to incriminate yourself. Don’t tell them anything you don’t want them to know.

“Oh, that was like two weeks ago, right, I remember that night,” Jake says. I’m happy he’s the one doing the talking, because the second words come out of my mouth, I don’t know if I can keep this act up. It’s one thing to stand around and not look nervous, but it’s another thing to talk and get people to actually believe you. Luckily, my dad and I both share the same trait of being able to get people to trust us, but all it takes is one person seeing through the lies to ruin everything. “We were both on that river cruise pitching to a number of senators and representatives about how they could work with Chimera.”

“Right, so you are both lobbyists working for Chimera?” Hernández studies us.

“Yeah, I hired them myself,” my dad says. “Sam is my son, and by this point Jake is my son too.”

I can sense the uneasiness in the air as my dad says those words. Jake tenses up, keeping his gaze locked straight forward.

“Did you have knowledge of them both setting up the event on that river cruise?” Martin says.

“Yes, I did. I’m the one who set it up, in fact.” He looks at them with a slight smile on his face, almost as if he is proud of the great lobbying work we have done. So far that has only meant threatening and physically hurting people. “I’m the one who gives them all the tasks that they carry out on behalf of Chimera. I tell them what mid-term campaign staffers to talk to so they can set up meetings with Congressional members and community leaders.”

“I see.” Martin loosens up, taking his intense gaze away from my dad. “Interesting setup you have going on. Might as well keep it all in the family, right?”

My dad awkwardly laughs. “Yes, exactly.”

“Well, thank you for your honesty, Mr. Bennet,” Hernández says. “What we are both here for tonight is to ask for your cooperation in a federal investigation into the death of Jessica Albina and murder attempt of Ahmed Baqri. No charges have been made on anyone yet, but due to some intel recently received, we will be investigating the three of you thoroughly in conjunction to any involvement in these events.

“Tonight, we would like to ask you all to let us know anything you know about any of these people, and anyone possibly connected to the crimes. Federal prosecutors are open to working with you, and if you know something of interest to us, please let us know. If you choose to lie to us, it will only make it worse for everyone in the end. Until this investigation is wrapped up, due to the fact that all of you are persons of interest, we are suspending your passports indefinitely. Over the next few weeks—”

“Can I please call my lawyer?” my dad interrupts. “This must be a mistake; we didn’t even know about the death of Jessica Albina.”

“I will ask you again,” Hernández presses. “What happened on the night of the sixteenth?”

“I told you this already.” Jake sighs, but keeps his tone level. “We talked to a few dozen politicians to attempt and get their support of the UBI Bill.”

Hernández’s stone-cold eyes remain locked on Jake. The entire time I brace my muscles, straining to keep myself from bursting into tears and confessing right then. The adrenaline is the only thing keeping me going.

“Over the next few weeks, we expect you to comply in these investigations as we move throughout this process, and to not waste our time. We certainly won’t be wasting yours.” Hernández steps away, his partner following him in stride.

They both walk away without saying another word. My dad follows them with his eyes until they enter the staircase at the far end of the hallway and descend to the streets below.

The second the door closes, leaving us all smothered in an eerie silence, the reality of our situation takes hold of me and cripples my body’s ability to breathe and even work normally.

They are onto us. They know it was us. They know that we are the killers of Jessica and that we are the ones tearing apart Washington and splitting this country in half.

We are now backed into a corner with the government itself surrounding us.

And I don’t see a way out.

Chapter 25

The outside of this home makes me question how much they get paid as commissioner of the Federal Drug Administration. It is sitting above the clean, bright blue waters of Lake Lure, North Carolina, the three-story mansion easily having eight bedrooms in it. The exterior is coated in stone slabs, with a bright red roof that somehow complements the medieval vibe of the property. The front of the house has a small fountain, with a beautiful patch of bright wildflowers in the grass.

“Are we really going to do this?” Jake says. We don’t have any weapons on us, and don’t have a clear idea of where the target location is inside this massive house. All we know is that we need to pretend to be the contractors fixing their pool in the backyard. We even have glasses and wigs to help disguise us, along with matching blue jackets. But one of us will have to slip away and find their daughter upstairs, where she is spending her final days hooked up to various machines in her bedroom.

I feel the syringe of poison in my pocket. Jake broke down in the car, having a fit over being unable to do it. Now, it is my task, and I’m not any more eager to be the one who has to slip away and deliver death in a small vial of liquid. But it is what has to be done.

The second we refuse orders, any protection the Syndicate has on both of us drops. The FBI will catch us as their suspects within minutes. Jake and I will both be thrown into prison, Chimera will fail, my dad will be killed, and our lives will presumably be over. I have to do this. I’ve tried for the last day to convince them there is another way, but they have refused.

Even my dad says this is what must be done—that this is what he has had to do before. In order for the brotherhood to survive through these tough times, grueling measures must be taken. Instead of obeying Syndicate orders and supporting the objective of the collective, Aaron Gottlieb has chosen to go against it. He hasn’t been eager to overlook Chimera and let the Life Pods roll out to the public. Already, his agency is stopping the production of new facilities and pleading with people not to enter into these pods. He claims they need to go through the normal clinical trials that accompany the vetting and pre-release of most medical devices into the market. Chimera and the Syndicate, however, don’t care about this, simply stating that any regulation the FDA could impose over this process could potentially hinder the free will of people.

ZOnion seems to be by far the most passionate group in support of Chimera. And Aaron couldn’t care less. He is adamant on holding up his duty to carry out his office in the way in which it was meant to be served, even though he pledged to always serve the Syndicate first. He is part of a growing list of figures, including Jake’s big brother, Drew, who are openly defying the orders of the Syndicate. He is angry that my dad got the support of the Syndicate even after defying council objectives in the past. They now want to all break the covenant because they feel that my dad got away with it without any harm, when in reality he had to pay. He doesn’t have to admit it for me to know what the price was: my mom’s life.

And now it’s time for us to make Aaron pay with blood.

“Do you have any other ideas?” I glance back at the white sprinter van that has the stupid logo for Buddy’s Pool Company pasted onto the side of it. I wish I could hop in there and drive away from here as fast as possible. But they will know exactly where I am and make me pay all the same.

“Throwing myself off that cliff.” Jake looks up at the mountaintops that surround the lake. Brown rock faces tower dozens of feet from the ground, with evergreen trees and tiny patches of red and orange leaves mixed into the mass of dark green. The crisp air temperature of the Southern Appalachian Mountains is a welcome break from the harsh, cold wind that constantly seems to be whipping in D.C.

“Not gonna lie, bro, that sounds mildly appealing.”

“Only mildly appealing?”

“Well, you know what I mean.” I laugh at his exaggerated expression.

“Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly what you want.” He pushes me back up against the van, pretending to make a move on me, quite aggressively by nearly anyone’s standards. “You look especially fine with that new black hair of yours.”

“Woah, woah.” I hold my hands up. “How did we get from joking about jumping off a cliff to this?”

“There isn’t a method to my madness. It just happens, okay? My God!” Jake sighs in a dramatic yet comical fashion, running a hand through his straight blonde wig. “Someone’s gotta try and make some joy out of this shitty situation.”

“I’m right with you, big boy.”

“Okay, that was a bit too far.”

“Yeah, agreed, agreed.” I shake my head. “But I did want to say, you don’t have to always make jokes when stuff is like this. It’s okay to talk about your emotions every once in a while.”

I think back to Riva’s final conversation with me. I remember the sound of her crying, and the way in which her body shook with each new round of tears more than anything else. She knows I always talked about my crazy, driven father willing to sacrifice anything for his goals, and now she is wondering whether I’m the same person. She’s wondering whether I’m capable of doing horrible things to others to try and get what I want.

She’s scared. She’s angry. And she’s upset.

And I can’t say anything to make this better, because I know she is right.

“I mean this in the nicest way possible, but please shut the fuck up.” Jake walks up the driveway to the large wooden front door a few dozen feet away.

“Are you being serious?” I speed forward to catch up with him.

“No, slightly sarcastic, but still. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, but we aren’t talking about it, okay? I can’t go back there, it’s not worth it.” He stops and looks at me right in my eyes. “You don’t deserve it. Trust me, you don’t deserve it.”

“Fine, you’re clearly a freaking brick wall, I won’t try to penetrate you.”

“Okay, if that’s some thinly veiled joke, that didn’t go so well.” Jake laughs.

“Well, I got you to smile, and that’s worth something.”

“Yeah, ’cause it was so stupid.” He rolls his eyes.

“Whatever.” I put my hand up, giving in to his stubbornness. “That’s not the point. What I wanted to say is, I don’t understand you. My whole life you were the one person I understood, and now I feel like I have no clue why you are doing this.”

“I didn’t know I had therapy today.” Jake looks at his wrist, pretending there is a watch there. “Wait, never mind, I forgot, we have to get moving so we don’t look like a bunch of idiots out here and miss our chance to go in there and kill a dying seven-year-old girl.”

“That’s exactly my point. This is so fucked up. All of this. And for me, I had to join the Syndicate. I have to do this Chimera thing, not only for my survival, but because part of me has always wanted the power to change the world, and I was so excited about getting to use it. It’s a lot more bullshit and way more awful than I thought, but oftentimes that is life.” I pause. “What I don’t understand is why you are even doing this in the first place? Why did you even join the Syndicate? Why is Drew of all people your big brother? And why are you standing here right now helping to build a company my father fully took over after yours died, when you could be literally anywhere else in the world?”

Jake stands in silence for a moment, staring at the smoothly paved asphalt on the driveway. Then, after what feels like an hour, he opens his mouth, refusing to look at me. “If I told you the real reason, it would ruin everything. It would destroy your life, and I can’t do that to you. I’m doing this because I want to get revenge on the man who lied to me for years. The man who tried to make me hate you. And the man who robbed my entire life from me.”

“I know—”

“No, I don’t wanna hear another word.” Jake narrows his eyes at the door ahead. “Just promise me that’s the last time you ever ask me about this. I love you bro, and, whatever happens, don’t forget that. I’m doing this to avenge my father. The story about him mysteriously dying and my mom going crazy is a pretty lie meant to hide an ugly truth. And I will never tell you that truth. It will ruin everything, and I just want to try and have things go back to a semblance of the way they were.”

“Things can’t go back to normal until you tell me what really happened, and why you are like this,” I say. “I know my dad is hiding something from me, I know there is a reason he really had you and me work together after everything. I know there is a reason you decided to team up with Drew and go against me, and why now Drew is all of a sudden kissing my father’s ass. It’s all part of some messed-up game, and I’m tired of playing this.”

“I’s not my secret to tell.” Jake sighs, his face contorting in a painful manner. “It’s not my secret. It’s for your dad to tell you. It’s something he should have told us years ago, and it’s a truth I wish I could forget about. But c’mon, we can’t do this now either way.” Jake straightens out his shirt and stands up tall. “Now let’s go inside and give them an estimate on this pool.”

I don’t have it in me to respond, not when I have to poison a girl dying from cancer in a few minutes.

Jake knocks on the door, his heavy knuckles pounding against the thick wood sending chills down my spine. Both of us press the side of our hologlasses to turn them on so we can communicate once inside. I have not emotionally prepared myself for this moment, so the only logical alternative seems to shut down. We will see how well this goes. This will without a doubt be the toughest thing I have ever had to do.

“Hey, good afternoon!” A woman with long, blonde hair and bright blue eyes greets us at the door, her loud voice and Southern accent both pleasant and cacophonous.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Gottlieb.” Jake smiles. “We saw you found our advertisement yesterday, and clicked into it requesting an estimate for how much the cost would be to fix your cracked pool, correct?”

“Yes, exactly.” She smiles, a certain warmth to her voice making me feel uncomfortable. She has no idea that the company we set up online is a scam, with all the reviews being phony, and the truck itself is a cheap rental with a sticker on it with the logo of our nonexistent pool maintenance company.

“What are your names?” She adjusts her hologlasses.

“I’m Zaire.” The name rolls unnaturally off Jake’s tongue. We never rehearsed what our fake names would be, but it certainly makes sense not to give away our actual names, except Jake’s name sounds fake the way he says it.

“And I’m Tommy.” I smile, doing my best to keep my body language as natural and calm as possible, which is nearly impossible when I’m on the verge of breaking down. A rush of blood floods my brain as my heart pounds in my chest to the point that it hurts.

“Well, it is very nice to meet you both. Why don’t you both come on inside?” She motions with her hand to welcome us into the large open room. The blast of heat from inside hits me instantly upon stepping in. “I know it’s not the warmest day out, but let me know if you need something to drink, or anything.”

“Actually, is there a bathroom around that I could use?” I ask. It feels so stupid asking someone if there is a bathroom in this massive place. The living room itself is larger than my entire apartment. The entire back half of the room is covered in windows overlooking the backyard below and expanse of the lake and mountains beyond. Stones line all the walls, piling all the way up to the roof that is at least two stories high. Yet, despite the beauty of the interior, there is a heaviness beneath the light flowing in through the windows that causes every hair on my body to stand up, and my spine to tense. The energy of this place sucks the moisture out of my skin and makes me feel as if something is closing in around my throat.

The connections of the Syndicate have clearly rewarded this family throughout the years, and now it is time to tear them apart.

“Yes, second door on the right in that hallway.” She points to the wide hallway that stems off the main living room at the center of the house. I curse silently in my mind, staring at the wooden staircase at the corner of the main room that leads to the second floor of the mansion where their daughter, Nora, is most likely to be.

“Perfect, thank you.” I smile, then walk across the living room, the echo of my footsteps on the granite floor bouncing off the walls. “It was a long drive getting out here, so seriously, thank you.”

“It’s no worries!” Her tone seems way too happy in light of the fact that her daughter is dying. She has an innocent look to her face, despite her being middle-aged, that innately wants to trust people. “I bet this one of your longer jobs you have had to go out and do, but I heard you guys are the best in Asheville, so I had to at least get an estimate from you.”

I wave to her, letting Jake handle the rest of the talking as I scurry off to the restroom. Even as I enter the bathroom, I hear Jake say, “Well, we always do our best. We are very thankful for you considering our business. Our boss very much appreciates it as well. This is still me and my partner’s first few weeks on the job, so you will meet my boss later and a few of our robots if you choose to continue on with us.”

“Robots?” Ms. Gottlieb questions. I close the bathroom door in the hallway and turn on the light to pretend as if I am actually doing my business in here. I listen intently to their conversation, biting my lip as I try to dispel the anxiety inside me. I have no clue if our plan will work. Jake somehow has to get her outside with me in the house, but nowadays, with a house this lavish, people are more alert than ever to make sure that items aren’t stolen or damaged in their residences. It’s a problem unique to the wealthy, while everyone else is stuck stressing out about how to accrue enough items to subsist.

“Yes, robots,” Jake says, his voice audible from behind the bathroom door. “They are very cool. To decrease labor costs, our boss invested in them a few years ago. Why don’t we go outside and see how they can help, and how we can help get your pool looking and feeling better than it ever has?”

“That would be lovely.”

I listen to their footsteps, not moving until I hear the glass door that leads to the patio slide open and then shut. Pure silence blankets the house after their exit out back. No pets seem to be anywhere in this massive mansion, and no people besides Ms. Gottlieb and her daughter.

Soon, there will only be one person here.

I emerge from the bathroom, keeping the light on and door shut in case they come back inside. Then, I creep out into the main room, staying as close to the wall as possible to avoid being seen by Ms. Gottlieb outside. The calm vibe of the house feels menacing rather than peaceful, and the second my eyes connect with the array of security cameras tucked into the various corners of the house, a shot of fear courses through me.

There’s a reason she is being so welcoming. She knows she has nothing to fear.

I dissociate myself from the moment, choosing to let my mind pretend that this is just me in another virtual world. Even without the feel of the Deadwave headset on, after years of doing some horrific actions in the game, I have grown accustomed to divorcing that reality from the real world. Now, I have to slice up parts of the real world and tuck them into a box in the back of my mind that I will never touch.

The repression doesn’t make the moment much easier. Instead of causing my body to collapse, it makes every step forward painful as each nerve inside of me is stricken with anguish and terror.

I climb to the top of the staircase, my strides quiet but long as I walk across the hallway. To my right, a large gaming room, surrounded in glass walls, contains an array of bean bag chairs, and the same costly, yet super fun gaming portal that all the professionals use to play Deadwave. I fight the urge to open the door and hook my mind up to a game of Deadwave indefinitely so that I can take my anger out on the world by mercilessly killing zombies. But instead, I keep walking towards the ominous beeping sound that echoes from the end of the hall, knowing that I’m too deep in to escape.

I have to do this.

I have to deliver the poison.

Then a notification flashes across my hologlasses.

Jake: She knows you’re upstairs. She has motion sensors up there. I can’t distract—

His text cuts off there, his eyes unlikely able to focus and type anything more given the urgency of the situation. I don’t need him to tell me for me to know that they are headed inside. I have seconds to get the job done.

Jake: Go out the window, I’ll meet you at the truck.

A second message flashes across my eyes as I enter the room that contains the dying girl. I approach the bed at the center of the room, my hands shaking and sweat pouring out my pores as I hold up the syringe. I try closing my eyes but can’t resist looking at the girl that lies on the bed. At least five tubes and wires poke in and out of Nora’s body, all hooked up to a similar life-support machine that kept Carlos alive on the trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. Except this girl isn’t going into a virtual world. She’s going to die.

I look at her face, choking on the tears that spill out of my eyes. She is no older than seven years old, with the same blonde hair as her mother, growing from her head in a tiny stubble, and soft skin that even in its sickly state is beautiful. Light pours in from the windows that line the walls of the room, and something about her body in a pink gown on top of the white sheets of her bed makes her look like a princess at the top of her castle.

I put my hand over the edge of the syringe, my arm shaking wildly as Jake sends me a series of panicked messages. I ignore them, instead letting the needle hover over her neck, readying to deliver what will be the poison that ends her life for good. She has her eyes closed the whole time, but right as the needle pierces through her skin, she seems to awake from her slumber, her big blue eyes connecting with me in a brief moment of confusion.

After delivering the entire vial of poison into her bloodstream, I slowly pull the needle out, and soon after her eyes shut again, this time forever. I turn away, holding back the urge to puke and break down into tears as I tuck the syringe back into my pocket and dash to the edge of the room that overlooks the garage. The piercing noise of the machine beeping, signaling that her heart rate effectively ceased, only causes the terror and sorrow inside me to spike even more. I put my hand on the window, knowing that if I don’t manage to escape now, I will spend the rest of my life in prison.

The footsteps of Ms. Gottlieb and a high-pitched scream as she runs down the hallway instantly give me the extra boost of terror I need to get moving. I slide open the window, sliding my body through in one erratic motion. I ignore the fact that my entire action is clearly caught on camera by security. The only one who will likely see that will be Aaron. He will be the only one that knows the truth, and he knows that if he shares it with anyone, he will die too.

My feet barely find a grip on the edge of a small groove in the stone outside the house. I shut the window, and without hesitation jump down onto the pavement of the driveway below.

I run to the white van parked at the edge of the driveway, Jake standing outside of it, with a look of both horror and sadness on his face. He hops into the van as I come within a few feet, starting the engine before I can even jump inside.

“I gave her an estimate. Let’s get the hell out of here.” He presses the button on the navigation and the van seamlessly backs up out of the driveway, tears silently streaming down his face. From the way in which the van operates, you can’t tell that it is currently speeding away from a house in which a little girl just died—in which a little girl was murdered.

It is a machine. And I can feel myself slowly becoming a similar entity. Someone programmed to execute without ever wondering if there is a better way. Someone who refuses to confront the demons inside them, and instead runs away.

But the machine inside me shatters as we pull out of that driveway and drive down the mountain road. My mind dissolves into a complete mental breakdown, tears pouring out of me in a ferocity they have never matched before. I pound my fists against the dashboard of the car, screaming at the top of my lungs, and every second I thought I didn’t have it in me to keep going, I keep screaming and screaming until it all bleeds into one painful sound in my brain.

Until it all becomes that beeping noise—the sound of death.

Everyone will think that the cancer finally took her life, taking their beautiful daughter away from this world.

But I know the truth.

I took her away from this world.

I killed her.

Chapter 26

I’m a monster.

I’m a prisoner of my grief.

I’m a failure.

These are the things I keep telling myself over and over again until the words are singed on the inside of my eyelids. I need this reminder, every time I go to bed at night, every time I blink, and every time I breathe, I need to feel it.

“Fuck.” I curse out loud at a volume that anyone within a few dozen feet can hear, but no one is inside this large waiting room. It’s just me, myself, and my suicidal thoughts. Not my favorite place to be in the world, but this time, unlike all the other times before, I deserve this.

Most of the time, I try to push the sadness away and escape into a video game so that I never have to feel it. That method happens to be more effective than most would think at repressing one’s sorrows. It has a way of numbing the pain, and desensitizing my nerves to the world around me, as I immerse my mind into a world with the sole goal of winning.

However, this world is not an elaborate game of Deadwave. I’m not an idiot, so I have known that all along. But the same way that my mind can repress all my emotion and focus on my mission, letting the passion of winning absorb me in Deadwave, it can happen in the real world too.

And this time I didn’t kill zombies and virtual avatars, I murdered real people. I killed Jessica. I nearly ended Ahmed and have permanently altered his mobility for life. And I ripped the life from a poor little girl who hadn’t lived nearly long enough.

Most would turn themselves into the law at this point or surrender their life over to drugs and alcohol. I’m choosing neither. Immediately as Jake and I landed in D.C. from our plane ride back from North Carolina, I drove right here—to Chimera’s newly opened compound in Washington D.C. I’m surrendering my consciousness into a virtual world and generating my own version of hell for my mind to exist in forever as my body remains suspended in cryogenic liquid.

This is the only answer, and this is what must be done.

This is what I deserve.

A pain that will last forever.

I walk up to the robot receptionist behind the welcome desk in the empty waiting room at Chimera Headquarters. It is late in the day, minutes before their closing hours for accepting new migrants into the virtual worlds.

“One Life Pod for Samuel Bennet.” I smile to the robot behind the counter. Even though it isn’t a human, something about the rawness to these interactions makes me want to impress it.

“We don’t have any open Life Pods. I’m sorry, Mr. Bennet.” The robot smiles warmly, the android face eerily similar to that of a human.

“That must be a mistake. I called earlier and they said there are a few more open pods, due to an expansion in the facility that opened.” I would normally double-check my hologlasses to ensure I’m right about the message, but I chucked them on the ground and smashed them on the way inside. I don’t want any distractions from the Internet as I prepare to exit this world forever. I don’t want any temptations to say goodbye to the people I love. I need to do this alone.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bennet, but we are at maximum occupancy. Try again soon.” The feminine voice echoes in my ears. The second she utters the words, an eruption of rage and desperation causes my arms to fly forward across the thin counter separating us.

“Are you programmed to say this shit?” I breathe heavily, watching as the security cameras light up red at my hostile interaction. My arms shake without me even meaning for them to, and my chest feels as if it is on fire. An animalistic force seems to be conquering me from within.

It’s the same survival instinct that combines anxiety, determination, and passion to attempt and get through the winter months. This time that same instinct is driving me to the end of my own life on this Earth.

“Mr. Bennet, your request for a Life Pod has been denied.” The robot remains smiling as I grab its metal face, completely unaware that I am currently trying to rip its head off.

My dad must have blocked me. The only logical explanation crosses my mind, and the largest surge of vexation I have ever experienced rockets through me. My muscles feel stronger and more energized than ever before. The realization hits me that there is no way that my dad will let his scientists drill a microchip into my brain and insert my mind into a virtual world. He needs me to stay in this world to help him.

I will have to force them to let me enter a Life Pod before he gets here.

He can’t control me anymore.

I storm to the side of the counter, where a fingerprint scanner stands on the side of the door frame, likely to open it. I ignore all normal conventions of attempting to proceed through a doorway, and instead throw my body up against the glass as hard as I can. It has a bit of budge at first, and after two more forceful rams of my entire right side against it, the glass shatters onto the gray floor tiles below.

A series of alarms sound in my ears instantly upon the glass shattering as dozens of shards of glass tear into my skin. I wince, the adrenaline and testosterone flowing through me helping to numb the pain as I sprint down the hallway. I hear the robot receptionist yelling at me as I hurry away from the front lobby, trying to find the room where the microchip procedures are done.

I make a left down another long hallway, the walls blue and dimly lit. Dozens of other hallways stem off from this one, leading in all kinds of directions with some twisting and turning and others going straight for what seems like a mile. From the outside, the building looks like a huge metal slab that takes up multiple fields to house tens of thousands of pods, and underneath the ground, hundreds of thousands more. But inside, this place is a maze.

Actually, never mind, by the looks of the scientists chasing behind me with their pistols raised, this is a death trap. They are not playing around. They scream at the top of their lungs, begging me to surrender so that they don’t have to shoot.

But for once, the bullets don’t scare me anymore. I won’t let them stop me. The Syndicate can’t control me, and my dad can’t rule over my life for another second. I’m choosing my fate now. And it is to remain in the darkness forever.

Another row of scientists charge at me from the opposite end of the hallway, all of them with white lab coats and pistols raised, but none of them pulling their triggers to fire at me. I stand frozen for a moment, trying to analyze whether it will be best to try and trick the scientists into surrendering or simply charge at one of the groups and see what they do.

But then my eyes connect with a lone door in this especially barren piece of hallway, and I immediately run over to it, determined to break inside. A heavy, dark feeling infiltrates the air, and as I run deeper and deeper inside the building, the air temperature drops to the point that even with me running, goose bumps line my skin.

I stand in front of the door and press all my body weight into it, trying to tear the metal door handle off and break my way inside. From the looks of the inconspicuous white door on the outside, it is likely an entrance to a storage closet. But whatever it leads to is better than having them all surround me like this. I’d rather make it as hard on them as possible.

The second they notice me opening the door, they fire bullets at me, some of them only dozens of yards away. The panic that explodes inside me gives me an extra boost of strength that allows me to snap the metal lock holding the door shut and burst inside. I close the door behind me, holding it closed with my back.

I missed the gunfire tearing me apart and being detained by the scientists, but what is now in front of me is infinitely worse. I thought I would be welcomed into the blackness of a storage closet full of cleaning robots to maintain these impeccable waxed floors, but instead an acrid, hot smell curls up my nostrils. Blinding light hits my eyes at first, but as soon as I readjust, my head already beginning to ache from the fumes, shock overcomes me.

A legion of robots stand at the far side of the large, industrial room. An odd, massive, cylindrical smoke-stack-like hole penetrates through the ceiling with steam from the acid at the center of the room funneling up into its dark confines, likely to enter a system of ventilation ducts in the building.

The robots are thin, sleek metal figures with versatile arms and a singular metal pole mounted into the floor where they can swivel around. Then my eyes connect with the dozens of naked bodies slowly rolling through dark, narrow tunnels at each corner of the room on a conveyor belt.

The robots work in tandem to grab each body in a smooth motion, each one unresponsive to their touch. They drop each body one by one into the Olympic pool-sized vat of acid. With each touch of a body from the conveyor belt, a disturbing sizzling noise echoes throughout the room as dozens of bubbles rise to the top of the thick, yellow liquid.

I stand in horror, watching at least a dozen bodies drop into the liquid from a conveyor belt that seems to have an endless amount on there. A huge rush of blood overwhelms my brain as the door behind me opens up. The shock is too powerful for my body to even move. I let the team of scientists grab my body without putting up any resistance.

Every hair on my body stands straight up as my legs and arms slowly vibrate with terror.

They are destroying all the bodies forever.

Chapter 27

The image of the bodies falling into the acid and merely disintegrating upon touch stays glued to my mind even as the blackness overcomes me. I don’t remember a thing that happens after that. Likely my consciousness faded from reality only to be brought back to the world, where the dark environment around me is suffocating my vision.

The darkness around me and chilling tension to the air are the least of my concerns, though. Immediately upon regaining my consciousness, every muscle in my body begins to tremble as I try to escape. The handcuffs chaining my wrist to the cold, wooden chair I am sitting on make it so that I can’t even move forward. I flail my legs in the air, trying to tip myself over to claw my way forward, but the chair remains cemented into the ground no matter how hard I tug.

This must be a mistake. A hot, pungent liquid makes its way out of my throat, the need to puke caused by a combination of the toxic fumes of the acid, the debilitating terror overtaking my body, and the horrid images trapped inside my mind. I scream, tears pouring down my face and landing on the pile of smelly vomit that lies on my lap and drips down my knees onto the floor below.

“Somebody help me!” I yell in terror. I have seen enough in my life to know the difference between a hallucination and reality. Those bodies being systematically disposed of in the vat of liquid was no dream, that is really happening, and I might be the next one to be killed. “I don’t wanna die, please!”

Suddenly the desire to cause my mind an unimaginable amount of pain for eternity fades as the thought of death becomes a reality. I don’t want this anymore. I regret coming here. I regret ever wanting this. I don’t care if I’m not worthy of my life, I still want it.

“Take his chains off.” A deep, calm voice echoes in my ears as two hands unlock the cuffs bounding me to the chair on either side. The silhouette of an arm rises above my head and I flinch, although the voice itself sounds all too familiar.

A light ding echoes off the walls in the small room, and an odd buzzing noise accompanies the grinding of metal chains against one another. The moment my arms are finally free from the handcuffs, the lightbulb a few feet above my head turns on, flooding the tiny room with light.

The face that stands inches in front of me takes my breath away.

“What—” My voice trails off as my lip quivers in surprise at the sight of my dad standing in front of me with a suit and tie on. He likely just got back from a meeting at the Chimera offices next to the capital, smoothly making the transition from businessman to torturing his son.

“Leave.” My dad looks past me at the two scientists wearing white lab coats and thick, box-like versions of hologlasses on their faces. “Leave.” He narrows his eyes at them as they stand there motionless, speaking in a chilling tone.

“We didn’t mean any harm; we were just following protocol,” one of them says, her voice soft, yet fearful.

“I don’t care if you followed the protocol or not.” My dad points towards the door. “Thank you for keeping him safe, but I need to talk to him alone.”

Now, they both understand and walk out, both breathing a sigh of relief as they realize their jobs aren’t in jeopardy. It takes them all of two seconds to take two strides towards the door a foot behind my dad and press their fingers on the scanner to get it to slide open. The room itself is made of cement walls and floor, with a mind-numbing staleness to the air. It is no larger than a custodial supply closet, but something about the darkness that hangs around the corners of the room gives me the impression that this room is solely used for interrogation and torture.

“Where am I?” I stand up as he takes out keys from his pocket and unlocks my handcuffs.

“We are in the basement.” My dad keeps his tone level, which catches me off guard. By now I expect him to be screaming at me and attempting to punish me for what I did. But right now, it seems as if I’m the only one with questions, and by the reticent expression on my dad’s face, he knows it too. The dark circles underneath his eyes look more pronounced than ever, and his large, pointy nose casts a slight shadow over his mouth due to the intense light shining down upon him.

“What basement are we in?” I scan the room as if the dull concrete will have answers for me. “I’m tired of these half-baked answers. I’m a freaking adult now, and we have been caught in some serious crap now for a long time.” My torso shakes, a series of chills rocketing down my spine as the smell of the acid and boiling bodies tingles my nose. I look into his eyes, having to pull my mind out of the pain to keep it from revisiting the horror I witnessed. I can’t break down now, I have to stay on top of my game. I have to find the truth. “Tell me everything. Or I’m out for good. What did I just witness?”

“I never wanted to tell you this.” His eyes move from my face to stare at the ground with tears at their center. My dad has always been a mysterious man, with almost unreadable emotions, and an endless stream of thoughts he allows almost no one to tap into. I know him better than anyone, yet at times he still feels like a stranger to me.

“Well, you have to tell me right now.” My voice is shaky as I try to be as confident and forceful as possible, but the sick feeling that began in my gut has metastasized to the rest of my body and left me with a splitting headache and aching heart. “Or I’ll call the police, and I’ll publicly denounce Chimera.”

“No.” My dad shakes his head, on the verge of yelling. He steps closer to me, the walls in the already cramped room seeming to close in around me even more. “You can’t. You can’t. It’s too late for that. The moment you do, they will kill you. The Syndicate will end you in a heartbeat. You are replaceable, this empire is not.”

“You are a fucking psychopath, you know that?” I step to the far corner of the room, refusing to look at him and his angry, intimidating eyes. After all these years, I shouldn’t be scared of his fists. I’m practically the same size as him, even if he has an extra twenty pounds of muscle. But part of me will never shake the fear that I have for him, and desire to want to make him proud.

“Everything has to go back to the Syndicate, right? You sold your soul to these devils and now you’re going to let our whole lives fall apart because of it? You’re gonna destroy the lives of thousands of others? You’re a monster, and it all makes sense now. What I did to Aaron and his poor daughter. What you let them do to me during the biggest weeks of my life, all part of their stupid hazing process, until it got out of hand and they made it clear that they actually wanted to kill the both of us. What these twisted maniacs made me do is what happened to mom. She didn’t kill herself, you let them kill her!” I yell, much louder than my dad, preventing him from even saying a word. I clench my fists, the fury causing my jaw to quiver. “And now, you’re about to kill thousands more, and burn their bodies in acid! All for what? All for what? Why are you doing this? Why are you destroying everything? Why did anyone even want your patents in the first place? What really happened to Bradley Pickering? What is the real truth? I’m tired of the bullshit, and before I go submerge myself into a virtual world, I’d like to know what I’m leaving here on this one.”

“I was protecting you.” My dad keeps his tone level, yet tears stream down his face. He opens his arms to give me a hug, and even despite my vexation towards him, in this weak moment, a hug helps keep my body from falling to the floor. “I have made many mistakes in my past. But I’ll start from the beginning. Right now, we are in an emptied storage closet in the basement of the Chimera facility in Washington D.C. The same place you entered a few short hours ago. I knew you were headed here, and I knew what you were doing, and I instructed my staff to stop you at all costs.

“There’s something about this that I never told you, and that I never wanted to tell you because I knew the moment you found out, your life would be in jeopardy.” He gulps, a nervousness creeping into his steady tone. “The reason the Syndicate wanted to kill me in the first place is because the huge promise that Chimera held, to allow millions to migrate to virtual worlds, was taking tens of billions of dollars of their funding and producing no results. They were all angry about how I was handling things after the death of Jake’s father, Bradley. They all thought he was the real founder anyway, and that I was using my friend to gain wealth. They can think whatever they want, I know the truth about all of that. And one day you will too, but that doesn’t matter right now.

“Drew got extremely mad at me, along with many other Syndicate members, because I kicked them off the board, although they had the largest equity in the company, and with my majority voting rights, due to Bradley’s will giving his equity to me upon his death, I took control of the board and exercised my will upon the company. Many thought I engineered Bradley’s death and forged his will, and those accusations are only partly true, but that is a story for another day. If I talk about that stuff, the Syndicate will end me. What I can say right now is that I had a global vision for what Chimera could have been, and I tried to sell the Syndicate on it, but none of them ever trusted me. They eventually punished me for defying council orders by not surrendering control of the company to the other members of the board, and Drew grew even more mad at me when I refused to cave for years after the punishment.”

“The punishment was killing Mom. She didn’t commit suicide. You let them kill her!” I throw my hands in the air, my voice echoing off the walls and bouncing back to shake every bone in my body. After saying those words aloud and registering his reaction, everything begins to make sense about my dad enabling the murder of his own wife. Due to his own fault in the tragedy, he could never talk about it. He was supposed to be the only one to know the truth.

The suicide was all a cover-up.

It was all a lie. A setup by the Syndicate itself. And I just did the same thing to Aaron. I just broke an entire family’s heart all for this brotherhood.

“I wanted to protect you.” My dad suddenly breaks down. He pounds his fist against the wall, veins popping out his forehead as tears pour down his face. His arms shake, and by the way which he grabs his chest, he looks like he is having a heart attack.

I stand there in the corner of the room, the shock too overwhelming to even begin to feel anything as he stares at me, shaking his head, the deep regret visible in the darkness in his eyes.

“I needed to protect you!” He erupts, both anger and sadness surging onto his face. “I knew I couldn’t tell you the truth without telling you why. And I still can’t tell you why I did that to this day. I can’t tell you why I allowed that to happen. They would kill me, they would burn your body in that acid, and they would destroy everything I have worked my entire life for. I don’t even care that they can hear me right now. The money will shut them up, and they will never know why I did what I did. It wasn’t out of fear of losing my own life. It wasn’t out of fear of betraying the brotherhood. I did it to save this world, but I knew that I would die in the process. And I knew that you would be the person to carry this legacy and bring it to reality, but I can’t tell you why. I can’t. It would ruin everything. But for now, I’ll only share with you the truth behind all the lies. I’ll tell you what’s really happening right now. And I know this is mistake, I know I should never say a word about any of this to you. I need to protect you, but you have already seen the truth. The same thing happened with the Syndicate, they showed you too much, and some things you can never go back from. I know what you saw today. And the truth is, now that we both know, we may end up in jail for the rest of our lives and remain America’s most hated men for eternity.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“I’m trying to tell you that this whole thing is one big conspiracy to try and make tens of billions of dollars as fast as possible. We don’t even know if the virtual worlds really work. I mean, our process is okay, but we haven’t nearly tested it enough to see if there aren’t any glitches. This is all a conspiracy!” My dad smiles, a sick laughter spilling out of his throat accompanied with a round of tears.

“Chimera is a lie! Yes, we are actually a gaming engine that developers can use to power games like Deadwave, but the Life Pods are a scam. The cost of maintaining a body each month and maintaining the server space required to hold an entire virtual world along with their brains is thousands of dollars. With an insane scale of hundreds of millions of people entering these pods, we could potentially garner a profit, but even then, it wouldn’t be enough. These people invested billions into this company, and the Syndicate needs new capital to extend their power in a changing world. They need the poor and elderly to be silenced in a post-employment world where resource war and changing climate will mean there simply won’t be enough to go around to give.

“People needed to be eliminated this world. And we said we would send them to a virtual world. But in reality, we are uploading their minds to the cloud, and submerging their bodies in a pool of acid. We have killed tens of thousands so far, and the plan is to kill millions. We will get their recurring payment forever, until this is all shut down, of course. The neural network we designed to process their brains and come up with a unique personality for each one is designed to respond to each family member and friend that contacts them, demanding that they stay in there forever, and it manipulates them into entering their own Life Pod. It is a massive operation meant to wipe the lives of tens of millions from this country without a trace.

“But we will get caught. This will only last so long, and the Syndicate will walk away with their money and we will briefly be the richest men on the planet. Our bodies are replaceable, the collective doesn’t care about us. They care about their wallets, and no matter how fat they are, they will always desire more. I originally was willing to sacrifice my life for this cause, and have you live on. I wanted to keep this secret from you, so that when this finally all comes toppling down, the federal prosecutors will charge me, and not you. I wanted to give you the opportunity to live your life, because that’s already been stolen from me.

“But now I realize that I was wrong. It would have been taken from you either way. You would have found out no matter what. I’ve sacrificed too much for his. I’m too deep in now, and I don’t know what to do.”

“You are joking, right? Like this is some sick joke.” The shock inside me hits a whole new level as the pounding sensation of my heart reverberates throughout my whole body.

“This isn’t a joke. This is genocide.” My dad’s voice battles between sounding monotone and so anxiety-ridden that hearing it can cause your blood pressure to rise. “I wish I were joking, but this was the only way to get them to agree to go along with my plan, and to not kill us both. It will be worth it in the end. This is the only way to save the world.”

“This was the only way? Devising a plan to kill millions of lower- and middle-class people, so that the rich can persist at the top of this new system? You are delusional and insane. All of you are!” I say that speaking directly to whoever in the Syndicate is listening in to our conversation. “What did you do to Carlos?” I narrow my eyes at him. “He’s still alive, right?”

“I told you I’d give you the truth behind all the lies.” Tears still stream down my face. I can see the sorrow in his eyes, but somewhere deeper, in the tightness to his muscles, is a burning determination. “The only reason Carlos had that heart attack is because of incorrectly labeled medicine his nurse administered to him. It was a setup by the Syndicate. We knew if we could get Carlos on the brink of death and have him migrate to a virtual world, it would create the story that Chimera needed to gain a ton of media attention, and lead to Riva being a natural global ambassador for our brand. He is dead now, though. That person Riva is texting isn’t her father. His body was burned in the acid weeks ago.”

“No.” I step forward, the vexation erupting inside me. I rear my fist back and punch my father for the first time in my life. “You monster!” I scream, punching him again as hard as I can in his jaw. He doesn’t punch back, instead putting a hand over his lip, blood oozing from it. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t wanna work for Chimera anymore. I don’t wanna be a member of the Syndicate. Upload my mind to the cloud and throw my body into the acid. I can’t live on knowing millions are going to die. I can’t do this!” My throat sears with pain as the words come out of me. I collapse to the floor, the tears blurring my vision.

My entire body feels numb, and my brain is practically frozen from the shock. I can’t think. I can’t move. I can’t do anything but think about the pain. The pain that hundreds of millions are going to feel.

I need to stop this.

“I will kill you. I will kill every member of the Syndicate. Stop this right now!” I throw my fist in the air, missing my dad, who steps out of the way. “Stop this! I’ll report you to the police! I’ll have the military raid this place. You can’t do this. You can’t. I will end every last one of you. A few hundred deserve to go to save a few million.”

“I didn’t want to do this, but I have to.” My dad stands above me, his face dripping with both sweat and tears. I have never seen a man look the way he does. So stricken with determination. So hell-bent on the fact that the destruction he is causing will be worth it even when he is about to kill millions.

“Come in.” My dad turns toward the door.

The door slides open and two dark figures enter the room. They have the same creepy white masks on that everyone wore at the Syndicate induction ceremony.

My screaming silences as they hold up two pistols, their barrels pointed right at my skull.

These people are monsters.

Chapter 28

The three of them work together to sit my writhing body back down on the small wooden chair at the center of the small room. The place barely has enough oxygen for the four of us, and if they shoot me, my blood will splatter all over the walls and leave this room stained with what will be the only reminder of my existence after I’m thrown into the acid.

“If you move, we will shoot.” A higher-pitched, yet chilling voice emanates from one of the masks. Both figures wear suits with boring plain-colored ties. They are likely Syndicate members who were in a meeting with my dad, or Syndicate operatives that he hired as henchmen and will likely be burned in the acid as soon as this is over.

I comply to their demands. In this moment, with all the dark, crazy thoughts swirling through my mind, and the crippling shock that has made my breaths short and heavy, I am not opposed to death. That is something I want to have control of.

I can’t let them control me anymore. The brotherhood doesn’t own me.

The second I stop trying to break free from their grip, they take their hands off me, and my father stands behind me. They keep the barrel of their pistols pointed at me, and with their free hands rip off their masks.

It is Justin and Brett.

I vaguely remember what Brett looks like from the night of induction. He sat on the head table, silent for the whole night, and was one of the men who took cover underneath the stage with us. He looks fragile almost, both his wrinkly skin and white hair about to fall off, which makes the fact he is pointing a gun right at me slightly less scary (mind you, it is still one of those feelings of terror you can never get used to).

“The Syndicate is falling apart,” Justin says, yet when he speaks, his eyes are locked on my father, not me. “Have you checked the main feed lately?”

Silence follows his question until I realize he is talking to me. I glance at him, confused. “I mean, I’ve glanced over it a few times, but I don’t often keep up with all of the updates.”

“Well, if you read it, you would know half this organization is shit-talking you right now. Five of our members died when the main lodge crumbled, and we still have no idea who or even if anyone is behind it.” Justin now locks eyes with me, his hand clenched around the grip of the pistol. Usually I can figure people out within a few minutes of meeting them, but Justin is a mystery that, from the first night I met him to all our meetings on Capitol Hill, I still can’t figure out. “If the Syndicate crumbles, world war could potentially follow. Powerful administrations all over the world will be pitting against each other, the social order will collapse, and in this pivotal time in history, losing all stability could be the worst thing. The world needs us, and the Syndicate needs you.”

Brett motions for Justin to put his pistol down, and they both drop them to the floor. They hit with a heavy clank against the concrete, and I jerk forward, trying to grab hold of one of the pistols on the floor and shoot all of them before they can do a thing to stop me. But my dad grabs my shoulders the second he sees me move.

“We don’t mean to treat a fellow Syndicate member like this,” Brett says. For someone who is the head of what is essentially a disparate terrorist group built on a web of conspiracy theories, one would expect him to be some awful human being who is painful to be around. However, there is a certain charismatic vibe to Brett that already makes me attracted to his energy. Something tells me he founded ZOnion out of necessity rather than passion.

“The stakes are higher than ever, and there are quite a few powerful people in the Syndicate who think you are the person to bring things back together. We want you to one day soon, maybe a decade from now, serve on the council, and help lead the Syndicate to an even better future. But first you have to help us survive in the present. We need you to help unite us again. People still feel divided over Chimera; they don’t know if this model will work to generate cash and social stability around the world. People don’t believe in your father, and they think he rigged the council and hasn’t faced the consequences of his actions. That’s why they want to break off and start their own competing secret society.

“They want to destroy the brotherhood, rescind their blood pacts and take over the world themselves. They don’t think this can work, because they don’t know our secret. But we need you to show them. We need you to support this cause and let it succeed so that the Syndicate and the world can survive.”

“Ironic how preserving the social order is killing millions upon millions of people.” I stare down at the floor, absolutely disgusted that any person would even try and convince me that I am doing a good thing by enabling this to continue. “You all deserve to rot in hell.”

“If you don’t listen to us, you will be the only one rotting for the rest of your life.” Brett’s tone turns from conciliatory to straight up threatening in a hot second. “The federal agents are onto both you and Jake. It is only a matter of days before they indict you both of you and send you to prison for the rest of your lives for your crimes. You can’t drown in the acid to get out of this. You will be stuck in federal prison for the rest of your life unless you listen to us.”

“There’s a reason I had Jake work with you. It’s why I was actually happy Drew tried to manipulate him in the beginning,” my dad says, his voice tingling my ears from behind me. “We have a ton of evidence we can reveal to federal investigators that will all point back to him. We will frame him for all those crimes, and he won’t be able to do anything to prove his innocence. You will get to live on, and help to continue building Chimera’s empire.”

“What? No, no.” I stand up, trying to bolt for the door and get out. My brain can’t handle any more of this. My eyes can’t stand looking at any of these men again. They are monsters, and I need to escape before they eat me alive too. “You can’t do that to Jake! He’s my brother! I don’t care what we’ve been through. He doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“It’s either you or him,” Justin says, the words causing a hot sensation to well up all over my skin. Brett and my dad grab me, forcing me to sit back down. “You can be there for eternity, or he can.”

“What kind of question is that?” I try standing up again, but their hands are over my shoulders and legs, preventing me from getting any leverage to break free from their grip. “I either have to go to jail for the rest of my life or he does? Get outta here. Get the fuck out of here.”

“You were the ones who chose to commit the crimes,” Brett says, an odd glow in his eyes. I can’t imagine how many other people have met my same fate. Used by the Syndicate until they are stripped to the bone with nothing left. That’s exactly what has happened to these men. Their lives are the brotherhood.

“I was forced to. You would have killed me if I didn’t!”

“You chose to join,” Brett says, both of his hands right on my thighs so I can’t stand. “And we will choose to protect you, so long as you continue to choose to support us.”

After those words, I decide I am officially done with these people. I take advantage of the fact that none of them are restraining my lower legs, and kick Brett, standing inches in front of me, as hard as I can in the balls. He backs up, the pain visible in his contorting facial expression and audible in his deep bellow. I use the newfound space to shove my dad off me, the adrenaline inside me taking my strength to a new level as I bend over and pick up one of the pistols on the floor.

Justin reaches for the one next to it, and we both stand inches apart, both of our arms fully extended with the barrel of our guns pointed at each other’s chest.

“I’m not gonna shoot you,” I say, using all my energy to keep from caving in to the shock of the moment. “Just get the fuck out. All of you. Get out of this room. And don’t come back.” I spit onto the floor, my stomach churning with each violent, venomous thought that courses through me. “Don’t come back, or I’ll make all of you regret it.”

Justin gulps, his eyes widening with terror. He glances over at my dad, and they both seem to exchange a glance that means a thousand words to them, but nothing to everyone else.

Justin lowers the pistol from my chest, and a moment later he drops it to the floor. The three men all exchange solemn, distant glances before walking out the door, and letting it shut with a resounding thud that sends shivers throughout my entire body.

None of them even look at me as they leave. None of them even say a word as they leave me here to drown in sorrow and shock with a pistol, a lone light, and an uncomfortable chair.

I clench the pistol in my hand, letting my back slide down against the cement behind me, until I lie sprawled out on the floor. I feel like I should be crying, but the emotions are too raw for tears to even escape me. I breathe heavily, my body entering a state of shock and paranoia that sends my heart racing and blood pressure soaring to deadly levels.

I wish everything he said was a lie. I wish the bodies being dropped into the acid were all a hallucination. But it is real. Everything he said is the truth, and all I want is my mom here to wrap her arms around me and whisper in my ears that it’s gonna be okay.

But if she did, she would be lying.

Everything is screwed.

And all I can do is sit here in the darkness and hope that I don’t let it turn me into the same monster that it turned those men into.

I’d rather die.

Chapter 29

The raid is happening at five in the morning.

That is in five minutes.

I roll over in bed to glance at Riva, whose body lies next to me in her undergarments, unsuspecting of what is about to literally storm into this house and ruin our morning, to say the least.

My heart has not stopped palpitating at a concerning rate since I was left (more like demanded to be alone) in that room hours ago. I didn’t have the energy or will to get up for hours. I lay sprawled out on the floor, letting the sadness and anger wash over me in intermittent waves as the shock let up a bit to allow an ounce of emotion to come through. This caused me to have bursts where I pounded my fists against the floor, tore at my own skin, and screamed at the top of my lungs, followed by slumps where I stared at the ceiling unmoving, tears lazily falling down my face onto the cement inches below. I toyed with the idea of picking up that gun and putting a bullet through my head multiple times

That’s a lie.

I didn’t toy with the idea. That implies I didn’t seriously consider it. I debated it, like told myself with the barrel pressed up against my head that I’m a piece of shit and that I deserve to die. But my dark thoughts spiraling more out of control with every passing second finally connected with the anger inside me to fuel my determination to a sickened height it has never reached before.

I have to end this. I have to do things the right way. And you know what, maybe there is no right way, but all I know is that enabling the genocide of tens of millions of people is never the answer.

I will not let my mom die in vain. I will not let them take her from me without revenge.

I glance at Riva, having to battle the urge to wake her up and tell her everything right now. I want to tell her how everything is a lie—how we both were unknowingly supporting the systematic killing of millions. But I can’t look her in her eyes and tell her the truth. I can’t see her reaction when she finds out that my dad has been manipulating her this entire time and killed her father, all for a publicity stunt.

I can’t break her heart, not when it won’t help anything.

I must tear the Syndicate to pieces, yet I can’t ever say the words aloud. I can’t ever betray them and let them find out. They will kill me and bury my dissent ten feet under the ground like they have with every other person who has tried to go against them.

I have to do this in secret.

I have to lie as much as them and beat them at their own demented game.

That’s why when I got the message from my dad on my way home from the Chimera facility that the FBI will be raiding my apartment to arrest Jake at the crack of dawn, I didn’t protest. This is what must happen. It is wrong, but I can’t fight it. One day in the future I can get him out. But right now, I need to ensure millions don’t die.

I need to save them before the Syndicate burns them all.

But I can’t save Jake.

His end is here.

One loud bang pounds against the door. It is so loud that its sound waves shake the foundation of the apartment and rattle Riva awake instantly. I check the glass tablet on the nightstand next to the bed.

The time is five in the morning precisely. These people don’t mess around.

“What’s going on?” Riva stares at me, confused at how I even ended up in bed, her brain still trying to process if that deafening bang was even real.

“I don’t know.” I push the covers off me, pretending as if I’m as clueless to the chaos as she is. I grab Reno before he can bark and give our location away.

“Don’t go out there, freaking shut the door and barricade it. We could be getting robbed,” Riva hisses. She widens her eyes and stands up, grabbing me back from the door. In any sort of emergency, Riva is certainly the person I would want to be with me. She has a killer instinct, and after years of near-death experiences in Deadwave, she thrives in high-pressure, high-risk situations. I’m the same way, that’s why we make the perfect team.

But we have no chance at winning this battle.

“Everyone put your hands up and come out into the open where we can see you!” a voice bellows from the kitchen right near the front door. It finally occurs to me that the deafening pounding noise was actually the sound of the door being thrashed off its hinge. An array of heavy footsteps descends upon the house immediately after the voice, and I shiver as the clicks of multiple guns being loaded echo in the silent, dark apartment.

They could be coming for me too. I suddenly like Riva’s idea of barricading this place. I don’t trust the Syndicate—I don’t trust anyone except for Riva. They could have just as easily thrown both me and Jake under the bus instead of compromising him. And who is to say that they are even good enough at manipulating law enforcement to exonerate me while sending Jake to prison for life.

They are powerful, but they don’t control the system.

They use it to get what they want.

I panic, the adrenaline surging through me as I connect the chaos ensuing in the kitchen with the sudden realization that they could be coming for me too. I don’t even dare peek out the door. I don’t need to look to see that they are scanning the dark room with lights attached to the tip of their machine guns and pistols, searching for any dangerous suspects to shoot and apprehend.

Law enforcement has gotten past the point of worrying about lives. They have to worry about their mission—keeping people in line and punishing those who step out of it. Laws don’t adequately protect anyone anymore, and neither do federal officers wearing bulletproof gear from head to toe, screaming into speakers that modify their voices to sound more intimidating.

Technology has evolved past the current system, and so have the ways of evading it.

But some things will always remain the same.

Sometimes the only answer is running.

“What the hell are you doing?” Riva whispers, so that none of the officers outside can hear us. Jake has also ignored their demands for him to come out and is likely hiding in his room, trying to find a way to escape just as we are. I grab my hologlasses off the nightstand. At least a dozen frantic messages appear on the screen from Jake with no reply from either Brett or my dad. He soon airs his grievances onto the main message board of the Syndicate network

No response.

They don’t give a shit about him. But they don’t care about me either. They only care about themselves. And now I’m stuck having to claw my way out of this alone.

“I’m leaving,” I respond to her in a flat tone, the determination doing a great job at masking my anxiety.

“Leaving?” She grabs my arm as I dash over to the window on the far side of our room. It is a five-story drop down to the cement below. There’s no way I will survive that, but there’s a chance that I can somehow use the edge of the windowsill and edge myself along the side of the building.

“Are you freaking stupid?” She puts both hands around my waist to stop me from stepping forward and opening up the window. Outside, I can see the empty neon tubes in a few of the signs of the stores down on the street level. Neon gas itself has even become a commodity worth stealing, and groups of people will often ransack entire towns at night, looting dozens of shops and restaurants of their neon, while shattering their signs onto the cement below.

“Let go of me,” I say in between gritted teeth. From the ferocity behind my words, Riva steps back. I can tell by the uneasy expression in her eyes that she isn’t sure she should even stop me from what I’m doing.

Somewhere deep in her eyes she is trying to search for the me she fell in love with.

She knows I have let them take over.

They always win in the end.

“What has gotten into you? What is happening right now?” Riva now has tears in her eyes. We both now recognize there is nothing we can do to get out of here. Even if they are after me, there’s no way I can escape them by jumping out a fifth-story window. They likely have other agents surrounding the building, waiting for one of us to try and make an escape so that they can catch us even easier.

“You will be safe, I promise.” I put my arm around her, feeling her body and taking in her gorgeous aroma for what may be the last time. “I have to go out there. There’s so much I haven’t told you. There’s so much I can’t tell you.” I gulp, my heart throbbing as the sounds of the footsteps approach the door. A piercing scream echoes through the apartment, likely the sound of Jake being caught. “I love you, Riva. Always remember that. And no matter what, I will make sure we succeed in our mission. I’ll make sure you are happy. You deserve everything. I just don’t know if I can give it to you.”

As I close my mouth, preparing to kiss her on her forehead one final time, three federal agents burst through the bedroom door, the lights at the edge of their guns cutting through the darkness and blinding me.

“Put your hands up!” one of them hollers, slowly approaching us with gun raised. Given how many suicide bombings there have been recently that have killed officers, they have been taking extra precautions to make sure none of them are injured in an explosion or killed.

“I-I—” Riva stutters as she stares shell-shocked at the figures who advance forward. I don’t stare in shock, though. I knew this was coming. All I feel inside me as they approach is a deep despair.

I let her down. She deserves better. She doesn’t deserve this.

“Don’t shoot!” she roars as they pass the edge of the king-size bed, their guns approaching within a dozen feet of us. Chills course down my spine as one of the federal agents swivels the barrel of his gun from Riva to point directly at me.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation.” One of the three figures in the military-grade bulletproof gear speaks up. He pulls a folded-up paper from a pocket near his chest. “We have a warrant to search every inch of this property. We will need both of you to step outside this room, with your hands up.”

“What the hell are you searching for?” Riva yells, still keeping her hands raised above her head. “This must be a mistake!”

“We hear the same shit every day, please don’t waste any of our breaths.” The three figures inch forward, two of them nodding at each other. “Step outside or we will have to make you.”

Riva doesn’t move, and neither do I. My only focus is trying not to hyperventilate and shake uncontrollably. I have to act calm, like I’ve done nothing wrong. Even though I should be going to jail for life. Even though I am a murderer.

These agents make good on their promise within seconds. As soon as they see that we aren’t keen on cooperating immediately, two of them lower their guns and lunge forward to grab the both of us. I don’t try and fight them off; I’m well aware that at this stage in the game, resisting will only make things harder for me when I try to bargain my life later.

I have to accept that this is my truth. I am a killer, and now I have to face the consequences. I need to feel an ounce of the pain that I have caused.

They pull out handcuffs from their waistbands, the large, burly man that apprehended me forcing my hands behind my back and snapping the handcuffs around my wrists in a few seconds. The entire time the guy who threatened to make us come out in the first place shines the bright light at the edge of his gun directly into my eyes, causing my eyelids to hurt from the intensity of the light even with them shut.

“What is this for? I’m not a criminal, get me out of these.” Riva squirms, her voice booming off the walls. The agent hits her hard in her shoulder, which only causes her to curse even louder at him.

Are they arresting all of us? A wave of guilt and terror hits me that overpowers the adrenaline keeping me from freaking out. I know from the few times my dad has talked to me about this kind of stuff (he has always had an obsession with Ponzi schemes, now I know why) that it is best to say as little in front of law enforcement as possible. Anything I say can be used against me.

But I don’t care anymore. I need to save Riva.

“She’s innocent!” I scream as two officers drag me out into the living room of the apartment. “She’s innocent! Let her go!”

“Why are you not innocent?” a voice hisses in my ear. “Is there something we ought to know about?”

“Leave her alone,” I snap, tensing up my body to make their job at restraining me more difficult.

The light blinding me shifts away, and I open my eyes to glance directly at Jake.

I break down in that instant, unable to force a final goodbye out of my dry throat. He has blood dripping from his nose all over the floor and a defeated look in his eyes as a team of agents lifts his limp body out the door.

I close my eyes and fall to the floor right near the couch behind me. I give up. The one person who had my back for eighteen years of my life, the one person who has been there for me the most is gone.

My best friend, my former manager, and my brother all gone in one fell swoop.

They tore us apart.

They tore my whole life apart, and my own father let this happen.

Now it’s my turn.

Chapter 30

The White House is big, like really big.

It feels especially larger when you are dashing through, it trying to find your dad, who has mysteriously disappeared during the signing of the Universal Basic Income Bill. Our work in fomenting dissent in the people and creating political chaos in Washington resulted in the bill getting passed swiftly in the Senate, and the dipping approval rating of President Baron made it essential for him to sign the bill immediately into law and hold an address to the nation right after to detail the magnitude of this bill.

Currently, dozens of reporters, a number of senators and representatives, including Justin, Chimera executives, and the leading members of Baron’s administration, are all gathered around the president’s desk to witness what may be the biggest moment in presidential history in the twenty-first century.

The entire country is freaking out. There is a literal frenzy as millions flood Chimera’s website and call to sign up for a Life Pod, the fake waitlist my dad created already growing by tens of thousands in the hours since the bill passed in the Senate.

They all have no idea that they are going to die. President Baron himself has no idea that by signing that bill he is enabling genocide. The thing itself is still so raw and shocking to me that I can barely comprehend it. It was just last night when I entered the Chimera facility and witnessed the horrors. It was just this morning when the FBI raided our apartment and carried Jake away.

And now, we are in the White House, trying to find my dad, who ran off moments before President Baron picked up the pen to sign the bill. I wish I could share some more exciting details on the process of getting in, but it is just as boring and intrusive as any airport security, except about five times longer and more thorough. Once inside the grand residence, I was somewhat underwhelmed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it is magnificent and all, but there is something so antiquated about the place that is fitting for the center of Washington. This whole city is stuck in the ways of the past, too slow to adapt to the changing tides for decades, and they are all now beginning to wake up.

They think this is the answer. They think this is what will finally allow Americans to have the freedom to thrive in a post-employment world.

They have no idea that they have been lied to.

“Does your dad normally do this?” Riva whispers as we walk past two Secret Service members stationed at the corner of one of the hallways in the West Wing. We are a few dozen feet away from the grand staircase leading up to the second floor that has red carpet adorning its steps and massive white columns holding up the high ceilings above.

“No, he normally puts on a show for everyone.” I think back to all the occasions he has been charming to people out in public, while he won’t hesitate to treat the people he loves and sees every day like shit. “I have never seen him storm out like that. Something has to be up.”

“Okay.” Riva nods. She knows my dad well enough by now to know that if something is wrong with my dad, that means that something must be really wrong. A million thoughts race through my mind about what it could be, but none of them make any sense. I message him a number of times using my hologlasses on the Syndicate network, but get no response. “Is it okay if we miss President Baron signing the bill?”

“Hell yeah, we ain’t missing out on any festivities.” I motion to Riva to where I can see the lights on behind a small, older white door that appears to be a bathroom. “All those people care about is being at the edge of a picture that will be taken by the reporters and be put on the top of all the columns online. It’s pathetic.”

“Agreed.” Riva walks ahead of me to the door. “I just don’t wanna break any rules like Jake. I told you not to trust him.”

“Riva, we don’t need to do this again.” I roll my eyes. After Jake was taken away by the FBI, they searched all of our property and then released us both without giving us much detail besides saying we were not suspects in the crime. They will be interrogating us both later, but for now they have their suspect. The Syndicate for once told the truth. They screwed Jake’s life over forever, but they kept me safe.

I feel my stomach churn, a sick feeling bubbling up inside of me as I think about it.

Riva thinks that I had nothing to do with any of it, and that Jake was working with the same group of people who were trying to kill me and my dad earlier to compromise our operation. She has no idea that I’m part of that group of people, and that I have done even more horrible things than him.

I should be in that jail cell. I should rot the rest of my life in hell.

“I’m just telling you I was right is all.” She grins at me, arching her eyebrows. “Maybe you should listen to me more.”

“I loved him.” I speak in a soft voice as we approach the door. “I had to give him a chance. My dad felt the same way. He was and always will be family to us, even if we aren’t related by blood.”

Riva nods in response, and her demeanor shifts. She lifts up her hand to knock on the door, then turns to me before having her knuckles pound on the wood. She has a distant expression in her eyes. “I once felt that way about someone too.”

She looks away from me before I can ask what she meant and knock on the door. Almost immediately I hear a panicked, groggy noise that can’t be mistaken as anyone else other than my dad. The painful noise bounces off the wide hallways of the White House, causing two Secret Service agents to glance at us suspiciously.

“Dad, what the hell?” I put my ear up against the door. I take a deep breath, letting the scent of chocolate that has been wafted throughout all the hallways hit my nose. If one could forget about the falling city beyond the gardens and tennis courts outside the large, ornate windows, this would be a peaceful place to be in. The air is too heavy for that now, though. I can feel the burden of the nation resting on this place, and I don’t know if anyone is strong enough to pick it up.

“Dad,” I hiss, my breath pressing up against the door. “You have to respond.”

“Please go away.” He coughs.

“What, are you throwing a tantrum?” I throw my hands in the air even though he can’t see me, the annoyed reaction instinctive. Riva’s expression shifts from confusion to amusement as she giggles.

“No, I’m just—just go away.”

“That makes no sense.” I now smile along with Riva, the idea of my fifty-year-old father in the White House somehow having an emotional response similar to that of a hormonal pre-tween somewhat comical. “Is everything okay?”

“No.” He pauses, then corrects himself. “I mean, yes.”

“Are you taking a massive dump?” That comment catches the attention of one of the Secret Service agents wearing a black and white suit with an exclusive model of hologlasses.

“No, I’m not.” His tone grows defensive. From the level at which his voice is echoing off the door, it sounds as if he is at a level close to standing up.

“Let me in then or get the hell out.” I knock on the door again. “You realize the bill that Chimera has sacrificed hundreds of millions of dollars and tons of time on is finally being signed? Like, this may be the biggest day of your life. Knowing you, it’s not when you married or when I was born.”

No response.

“Are you ignoring me now?” I say, and Riva’s eyes widen. At this point, feeling embarrassed over my family is something that I’ve grown numb to. Now I can check off Riva witnessing my dad having a mental breakdown from the list of things that I never wanted to happen but came true anyway.

“Just come in,” my dad says, tears caught in his throat as he speaks.

“You are gonna need to unlock the door for that,” I say. My dad has only once cried in front of me for like a few seconds in a car ride in London after I almost got put in jail in a foreign country. But my dad has never, not even once, opened up to me about his emotions. In my eyes, he openly feels about enough emotion as a rock.

A slight clicking noise ensues and I twist the brass knob, opening up the door to the cramped bathroom. It has a small toilet and equally tiny sink with floor tiles and wallpaper that likely haven’t been updated in twenty years. Yet the towels appear to be freshly washed, and the room itself has a fresh aroma, save for the sweaty smell protruding from my dad.

“Are you high?” I stare at my dad’s bloodshot eyes, then glance at Riva, who seems to be thinking the same thing.

“I’m not high.” He barely chokes out the words as he stares in the mirror directly into his face, which looks more tired and stressed than I have ever seen it. Even his body looks to be thinner and almost lifeless in his tuxedo.

“I feel like we have switched roles, and I’m the parent talking to my kid who came back from a wild trip on acid and is now contemplating life.”

“Honestly, James, he’s not so far off.” Riva adjusts the strap on her turquoise dress. “You look like something happened.”

“I can’t watch that.” The barrier encapsulating my dad’s eyes finally breaks and the tension in his clenched muscles releases as he lets out a huge sigh. “I can’t see it. I never thought this day would actually come. This is the day where Chimera may be on a fast track to become the biggest company in the world, and that would make me the richest man. But I don’t give a shit about that.”

Riva and I both stand in silence, waiting for him to continue.

He finally turns away from the mirror and leans back on the counter to stare at both of us. “The money doesn’t even mean much after a while. Like, yeah, me and my family are set or whatever. That’s fine, but who gives a shit? I didn’t do any of this for that. I didn’t do any of this for more power. The money doesn’t make me happy. I have never allowed myself to be grateful for any of it. I have never allowed myself to enjoy a second of all of that. I never thought I deserved it. I never will.”

“Why did you do this, then?” Riva tilts her head, confused by what he is saying. She meant the comment innocently, but I know exactly what she is thinking. My dad doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would do something for anything but money and power.

“I know how to save this world.” My dad rubs his neck, his code to me that he can’t share everything he wants, because they are listening. “I know how to make this world better than it ever has been. To eliminate poverty, to end all of it. But this, everything you see right now. All of it is a lie. One big fat fucking lie!” His voice booms off the door, definitely garnering the attention of some of the security outside, but none of us inside this bathroom care. Even though his scream practically hurt in the confined space, the emotion behind it all is something so new and captivating coming from him.

“Chimera Life Pods aren’t the answer. Everything we are working on right now, none of it is the end game. What I have worked my whole life trying to protect, what I have tried so hard to keep secret from the world, is what will change everything forever. The patents they wanted weren’t to the Life Pods. No one knows what they were to, but a few people know how and where I got them from. And those people know that these patents the government gave out will alter all of society ten times over. That’s what they were after, and that’s what I have sought my whole life to protect. The keys to the inventions that will reinvent this world. But I don’t know if I will ever get a chance to unlock them. I don’t know if anyone will.”

“Why do you say that?” Riva presses.

“Because there’s shit I haven’t told anyone on this Earth. There have been reasons for everything I have done, but I’m afraid I’m wrong. I’m afraid all the sacrifices and all the pain won’t be worth it.”

“I’m sorry, but James, I don’t quite understand what you are saying.”

He sighs, his back slowly sinking down until his butt sits on the floor and his legs sprawl out across the bottom of the toilet. “Everything is going to be destroyed. One day my time will be up. One day I will have to pay the consequences, and it could be coming at any day or at any time. This is all just a game, and I’m afraid I will lose. I’m afraid this world will lose. And I’ll have nothing left. We might have everything for a few short moments, but in the end, none of it will matter.”

He pauses, his body seeming to vibrate with each breath. For once in my dad’s life he seems more real and vulnerable than ever. “Everything will come crashing down, and when that day comes, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what I’ll do if I find out that I was wrong. I already gambled this whole country away betting that I’m right.

“And if this risk doesn’t pay off, the debt can never be repaid.”

Riva stares at him in shock as he closes his eyes, his body shutting down as he lies down on the ground. The emotion is too much for him to handle, and the intensity of the moment is a bit too much for all of us to process. I hear the pound of the footsteps of the Secret Service agents approach the door, likely to check in on us.

But we all sit in the silence, letting my dad’s words sink in and the tears ebb out of his eyes. I stare down at the ground, channeling every bit of anger and determination inside me.

I don’t care what happens to Chimera. I don’t care if his grand plan to save the world succeeds or fails. I love my dad, and I admire him, but now I finally have to show him what I’m capable of.

I can’t let him kill millions of innocent people.

I can’t let the Syndicate survive.

This empire will fall.

I will destroy this conspiracy from within.

Don’t Miss Out on the Next Books in the Conspiracy Chronicles…

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Acknowledgements

I love writing these things. I’m so thankful for so much that I always smile when I attempt to condense the thousands of words of gratitude I want to share into a few sentences. But here is my go at it.

First of all, thank you to my parents, especially my mom, who is letting me live with her during my gap year in which this book was outlined, written, and edited during the first few months after my high school graduation. I’d also like to thank longtime editor Claudette Cruz and longtime cover designer Domi from Inspired Cover Designs. They always do FANTASTIC work on my novels, and I couldn’t be more happy with the amazing team they form that make it possible for me to get my novels out into the world at high volume and a quality of work on their end that I am always happy with (still gotta learn to be happy with my own writing—I’m getting better at that, though).

Lastly, I’d like to thank my brother. After all, this book is dedicated to him, and despite all we’ve been through, he never ceases to be the funniest guy in the room, and for always making me smile, I have to say thank you. And most importantly, I want to thank anyone who has ever taken the time to say hello or reach out to me about my work. It’s those emails, comments, and letters that make this the best job in the world.

About the Author

Michael Evans is the author of the Control Freakz Series and the Conspiracy Chronicles. He is the Main Coordinator of YEW Clubs for the Young Eager Writers Association, which seeks to help young writers build sustainable careers as storytellers through their network of clubs, their annual conference, and their podcast called the Young Eager Writers Podcast.

He recently graduated high school and is currently taking a gap year from his studies in Charleston, South Carolina, but is originally from Long Island, New York. Some of his hobbies include hiking, running, urban exploring, going to the beach, watching and taking artsy pictures of sunsets (it’s honestly a very enlightening activity to partake in), and walking his ginormous, fluffy goldendoodle underneath the stars.

To find out more about him or his work, you are welcome to visit here: www.mevansinked.com. If you ever have any questions for him or business inquiries, feel free to contact him at mevansinked@gmail.com or @mevansinked on Instagram.