Chapter 51
Escape!
Friday, October 22, 2059
9 days post apocalypse
In Front of the Stadium Entrance
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 Leo and I, 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 One 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 Two complete.
Per Mr. Osmond's instructions, half an hour later, the buses pulled into a large fuel depot that stank of gas, diesel, and less pleasant things.
“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 Three complete.
Once he was sure everyone on the three buses had left, aside from the four unconscious people, 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 the Afflicted. Some of the bodies were the 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 to 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.”
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***
As the motley assortment of men women and children headed for the shelter Mr. Osmond prayed was there. He remembered his conversation with Leo, on the day of the Change, as they'd sat next to each other in the back of a truck after killing their first High-Level Boss.
I don't know all the details, but I know how the programmers intended us to win School's Out. Leo had messaged. The “Don't Swim in the Water Reservoirs” sign that kept popping up in the game was the giveaway. The six player characters go to the water reservoirs and go swimming, merging with their alien symbionts, sacrificing themselves to save what's left of the human race.
You think so? Mr. Osmond messaged back.
Yes. You see, the alien/human symbionts break apart into alien protozoa 2.0, taking over the reservoirs and eventually the earth's water supply. When these new protozoa infect a human, whether previously infected or not, they form a symbiotic, rather than parasitic, relationship with their host. So you now have millions of alien/human symbionts. And that's how these godlike Bosses are defeated.
Mr. Osmond messaged back. So you're suggesting we sacrifice ourselves somehow and break ourselves into millions of implants? How's that supposed to work?
Leo answered: The sacrifice isn't literal. At least not for you. Every implant wearer needs to sacrifice some of their implant's power to continue producing more implants. Ideally, every fucking human on this planet needs an implant.
How do you propose to make all, or most, of the world's implant wearers continually replicate their implants? Mr. Osmond asked. And what do you propose to do when the Bosses hunt down your implant wearers and grind them out of existence before they gain the numbers and skill levels to fight back?
The Guardian has two functions, Leo responded. The first is to give people hope. To convince them they have a chance of winning and that they need to replicate their implants. The second is to convince the High-Level Bosses they've won the war, so they'll return to fighting among themselves. And to do that, the Guardian needs to die.
Leo. We just talked about your suicide issues. Mr. Osmond messaged back. And how do you plan to convince all or most implant wearers to sacrifice implant capacity to create more implants?
I was hoping you and the Professor would help me get the Guardian's message out. Do you, or the Professor, have the ability to communicate with all implant wearers?
That is a high-level communication skill, Leo. Implants were made with personal freedom and privacy in mind. To outright message everyone, regardless of their preferences, is a big deal. As is the ability to eavesdrop on other implant wearers' communications. I would need to raise my Network Administrator skill to an extremely high level.
So what would it take for you or the Professor to do this? Leo asked.
About 30,000 Demon Tears. Mr. Osmond had responded.
***
“Man. This place is a dump,” Brick said when they finally entered the shelter, three days after they'd entered the subway tunnel. If it weren't for implant wearers with speed and strength skills, not to mention their Earth Mage, who'd leveled up several times in rock removal, it would have taken them a lot longer to get there. Parts of the subway tunnel had to be cleared before they could proceed.
There were numerous sounds of agreement.
“It's got good bones,” Mr. Osmond said, looking around the large, dusty shelter, which had been uninhabited for decades. “I learned about this place from a black site that kept track of old bomb shelters. Someone built a parking lot over the shelter's original entrance, so the entrance we created in the subway tunnel is our only way in and out. There should be a ventilation system and access to groundwater, though we may have to do some work to use them.”
“Welcome to our new home,” Gretchen said, as tired as the rest of them. “Charlotte, get the other assassin and make sure we have all the stragglers and that we've removed any evidence we came this way.”
With a groan, the two implant wearers got up and left for the tunnel.
“Some shelter supplies should still be good,” Mr. Osmond said. “This place was built with longevity in mind. We'll have to use human power to power the generator, to begin with at least, but we have super-powered humans, so that should work. Trent, you and Howie check for supplies. I'm going to find a quiet place where I can get some work done.”
Mr. Osmond found a small dusty room with faded posters of Cold War propaganda and some long-forgotten president on its walls. There were stone benches and a stone table with an ashtray on it. He'd found the shelter smoking room. Completely exhausted, he collapsed on a bench. He went into his implant messaging and got to work.
***
Alpha Gremlin: Greetings. You can ignore this message if you want, but you can't prevent me from sending it to you. I have a high-level networking communication administrator skill. To quote a TV series from the previous century called Outer Limits: “I control the horizontal. I control the vertical.” Ha. I've always wanted to say that. I'm sending this message to everyone with an implant.
I strongly advise you to pay attention to this message, since I'm trying to save your lives. Those High-Level Bosses floating around are not your friends. They're trying to lure out the implant wearers and anyone else that might pose a threat to them. If you're hidden, stay hidden. If they don't know you're an implant wearer--Do. Not. Tell. Them.
Mr. Osmond waited for the response. Alpha Gremlin felt fitting as his new implant name. He intended to sneak around the implant communication network and sabotage the Boss monsters' plans.
Blowfish 23: Piss off. Wanker.
Green Master: Perv.
Tuf Girl Kelly: Perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv. Go away. Perv tentacalist.
Alpha Gremlin: Tuf Girl Kelly, what is a tentacalist?
Tuf Girl Kelly: Perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv. My friend says a tentacalist is someone who hates beings with tentacles. Pastor Brown rescued a kitten from a tree with his tentacles and he's helping everyone out. But tentacalist Leo Edwards supporters like you are trying to kill him because he floats around and has tentacles and you resent his success and good fortune in life.
Alpha Gremlin: I resent him eating everyone. You seem exceptionally childish, even by implant wearer standards. How old are you, Kelly?
Tuf Girl Kelly: Perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv, perv. I'm six-and-a-half.
Mr. Osmond groaned. Then he contacted the girl's Imp. The ability was one of his high-level system administrator skills. The same skill he used to ensure Leo's Imp kept quiet about his continued use of Leo's senses, despite Mr. Osmond having supposedly died in the explosion.
Alpha Gremlin: You must be aware your owner's behavior is counter to our given quest of eliminating the human-eating monsters, and it's likely to get the two of you killed.
You are correct, Kelly's Imp responded. However, I'm not allowed to interfere with her personal choices.
Alpha Gremlin: True. But you can shut down certain implant functions for her safety until she behaves in a more rational quest-friendly manner.
Again, you are correct, Kelly's Imp said. I will shut down everything but communication and implant replication ability. Sadly, I don't think she'll notice.
Mr. Osmond buried his head in his hands. The world was doomed. Then he proceeded to go through the other responses.
The MF Paladin: Are you some kind of perv? Better stay out of my town. We've got too many of those already. But assuming you are correct, Mr. Gremlin, how do we get rid of the bastards?
Alpha Gremlin: Well, Mr. Paladin, let me tell you about the Guardian's plan to save the world...
***
The shelter residents huddled around one of the old TV sets that someone had fixed. Over the past few weeks, they'd done a lot to get the old shelter cleaned up and functioning again.
The shelter residents had used their skills, implant related and not, to access clean water, clear out the ventilation shafts, and fix the generators, appliances, and waste disposal system. They'd even set up the shelter's hydroponics plant so residents would have fresh vegetables to go with the barely edible food from the shelter's storage.
Like many of the world's inhabitants, the shelter residents watched Leo's trial. To say things weren't going well for Leo would be a bit of an understatement. Leo had to be the most hated person in the world.
The human audience in the huge amphitheater courtroom chanted. “Death to Leo! Death to Leo!” Leo sat there, hopeless, as witness after witness testified against him.
One of the implant wearers flew over and threw something that splatted down next to Leo. He didn't respond. The large Boss monster floating next to Leo waved off the flying implant wearer with a tentacle.
Lydia ran crying from the room.
“What is wrong with these people?” Trent asked.
“They want to believe the Ascended Ones are there to help them,” said the bearded man, David Longstrom. “When you're homeless and out on the streets, you learn to read people. Those Ascended Ones are like pimps luring runaways into drugs and prostitution. They're being so nice, predators stalking their prey. If I was a human in that audience, I'd run away as fast and as far as I could.”
***
Lydia stormed into Mr. Osmond's office. “There's got to be something you can do! They're going to kill him!”
“I know,” Mr. Osmond replied, looking exhausted. “I'm as upset as you are, Lydia, but there's nothing we can do.”
“Well. A frontal attack would be suicide,” Charlotte said, coming into the office on the tail end of the conversation. “But what if a small group of us were to sneak into that place and bust him out? I've gotten pretty good with my concealment skill.”
Mr. Osmond stood up, walked around his desk, and sat on it. “Absolutely not, Charlotte. Even if you could sneak inside, sneaking out again with Leo would be suicide. The Ascended Ones would quickly find you, and those implant wearers would help them search.”
“But they're going to kill him!” Lydia shouted.
Charlotte looked away.
“I know, Lydia,” Mr. Osmond said. “And I'm sorry.”
“Something I've wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Osmond,” Charlotte said after Lydia had left, probably to find Sparkles and cry. “You killed four people.”
“You mean the ones I left on the bus before we came here?” Mr. Osmond replied.
“Yes. You knew the place was going to blow up, and you must have known those four people would die when that happened.”
“They were traitors,” Mr. Osmond said. “They'd be killed soon, regardless, when our Boss friends dropped their nice monster routine.”
“We could have left them behind, or on some street someplace,” Charlotte said.
“Then people would wonder why we left them,” Mr. Osmond said. “It would be one more loose end that would increase the likelihood of them finding us here. We're at war, Charlotte, and if the monsters find us, we're dead.”
“Did it bother you, killing those four people?” she asked.
Mr. Osmond thought it over. “Yes, their deaths bother me a great deal,” he lied. “But we have to do difficult things if we're going to survive.”