Chapter 109

Friday

October 22, 2059

9 days post Armageddon

In Front of the Stadium Entrance

Escape!

Three buses left the stadium, with all the implant wearers riding on the last one. The rear guard.

Leo, you idiot! Mr. Osmond thought. They could have faked the boy's death. But no. Leo had to do the self-sacrifice thing. Idiot!

“Guys. Please come this way.” Mr. Osmond pulled four implant wearers he'd selected toward the back of the bus. “Time to fill you in on what's really going on.”

Three men and a woman followed him through the bus to the back, where he evicted a few people to give them a little space.

“You see,” Mr. Osmond said quietly, forcing the four to move in close to hear him. “I have been monitoring your communications. And I know you four have been in contact with Ascended One sympathizers and have considered betraying me and Leo, and that won't do.”

Teach: Charlotte. Take them out!

Before the four could react, the assassin injected each one in the neck with a drug designed to knock them unconscious for the next hour.

The bus lurched forward on the uneven road. Mr. Osmond grabbed the back of a seat to keep his balance before helping Charlotte arrange the four unconscious forms so it looked like they were taking a nap.

It had taken virtually all of his and Leo's Demon Tears from the past nine days to get his Network Administrator skill to the point where he could eavesdrop on private conversations. But it had been worth it. He could eavesdrop on any implant conversation in the world and frequently knew what the implant wearers were planning to do before they did.

Step 1 complete.

Minutes later, Trent flew to the moving bus, yanked the bus's rear door open, and rushed over to Mr. Osmond. “They got Leo!”

“I know,” Mr. Osmond said. “We'll look into rescuing him later, but we need to take care of ourselves first.”

Teach: To every implant wearer joining us for this trip, I must insist you give me control over your implant messaging systems. This is only temporary, but essential if we are to survive.

Every implant wearer on the bus, aside from Mr. Osmond, now had a prompt.

Allow Teach communication override authority. Yes. No.

Gretchen spoke up. “Please grant him access. I already have. We must maintain complete communication silence for the near future if any of us are to survive.”

“I hope you know what you're doing,” Trent said, before selecting Yes.

Mr. Osmond's trusted allies, Gretchen and Charlotte, had been prepared for this. If anyone refused, they would be dealt with like the four in the back of the bus.

To Mr. Osmond's surprise, nobody refused. Over the next few moments, everyone on the bus hit Yes.

Excellent.

Step 2 complete.

Per Mr. Osmond's instructions, half an hour later, the buses pulled into the large fuel depot that stank of gas, diesel, and less pleasant things.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Everybody out! Move it! We're on foot from here,” he said, pounding on the buses, urging the passengers to grab their luggage and disembark, before herding them all down some steep flights of stairs.

“We can go back to the stadium for the rest of our stuff, right?” somebody asked.

“Sure. Maybe later,” Mr. Osmond lied, urging them along.

Step 3 complete.

Once he was sure everyone on the three buses had left, aside from the four unconscious ones, Mr. Osmond rushed over to several large tarps resting nearby and pulled them away, revealing the dead bodies concealed underneath. He'd quietly obtained the bodies while trapping Afflicted. Some of the bodies were Afflicted, others were not. As long as they served their purpose, it didn't matter. He felt sick with nervousness, and the smell of fuel and death made him gag.

He set the timer for the bombs he'd placed in the depot the day before. Then he rushed down the stairs after the others, wishing, not for the first time, that his character class had more physical augmentations.

“What about the four we left?” Charlotte asked.

“They won't be a problem.” Mr. Osmond pulled open a large steel door that led to a tunnel.

“Where are we going?” Gretchen asked.

“It's a surprise, but we need to move, now,” Mr. Osmond responded. “I saw a Boss flying overhead. We need to hurry!”

“Come on, let's go.” Trent urged frightened people forward into the darkened tunnel.

The large group rushed through several tunnels, taking them deeper and deeper underground.

There was the sound of thunder. The world shook amid the rumble of falling rocks. A large stone crashed feet away from Mr. Osmond.

“Shit! Move move move move! Faster!” Mr Osmond urged them forward while using his implant to kill off the names of every implant wearer in the group. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, they were all dead. The four they'd left on the bus, of course, were dead for real.

After minutes of rapid walking, the narrow tunnel opened into a vast cavern.

“Neat,” someone said. “Are those train tracks?”

“Is this where we're staying?” someone else asked, shining a flashlight around.

“Hey!” a voice shouted from the other side of the cavern. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Flashlights and guns pointed at Mr. Osmond's group.

“Well, this is unexpected,” Mr. Osmond said.

“Easy, guys.” Trent summoned five fireballs and sent them up and outward to light up the surrounding cavern. “We're here with our families, not looking for trouble.”

“So are we,” a large bearded man answered. “And we worked hard to keep this place a secret, something you've fucked up for us.”

“What exactly are we doing here, Mr. Osmond?” Gretchen asked. “If this is the shelter you promised, I'm going to express disappointment.”

“And you'd better have brought your own supplies,” the bearded man said. “We were about to do a supply run before you guys came barging down here, fucking things up, and collapsing our tunnel.”

“Is there another way out?” someone asked.

“I don't know,” the bearded man responded. “I certainly hope so.”

“I believe it is time for a meeting,” Mr. Osmond said.

***

“Obviously, this is not the shelter,” Mr. Osmond said to the crowd of adults surrounding him. “We're in a forgotten subway line from the previous century, near two different shelters I'm hoping our Boss friends will think we were headed before we died. The shelter I have in mind is over thirty miles down these tracks, at which point we'll have to get through twenty feet of granite. I'm hoping our earth mage can help us with that. If not, we'll have to use explosives.”

“So what kind of shelter are we talking about?” Gretchen asked.

“A little-known shelter built last century during the Cold War. Deep underground, it should escape our Boss friends' notice as long as they don't suspect its presence. I'm hoping the shelter has usable supplies, but we may have to improvise... possibly a lot.”

“So you've never been there. You don't know what you'll find,” said the bearded man.

“I didn't have as much time to plan this as I'd hoped, and your group is joining us. If you were to let slip to the Bosses that we're still alive, we soon wouldn't be.”

There was silence.

“We've been listening on the radio,” one of the tunnel dwellers said. “What makes you so sure these Boss beings are hostile?”

Mr. Osmond sighed. “The Bosses are behaving exactly as predicted. Only this time around, they're better organized. They're being as friendly as possible to lure out all the implant wearers and anyone else they think might threaten their apex monster status. Once they eliminate those threats, they'll round up the rest of the humans and pen them up like cattle.”

“Any chance we can get one of them implants?” the bearded man asked.

“Actually yes,” Mr. Osmond responded. “We're building an army. Stick with us and you'll get one.”

“Then I guess we're going with you.”