INFINITE: Chapter 21

A.N. This is our last chapter before the epilogue??? And also a really fun one, in my opinion. So yeah, enjoy! But stick around for the epilogue next week, too, because it’s by far my favorite part of this whole story. (Except for maybe killing everybody’s favorite characters, or making Eli suffer. Ssh. Don’t tell.) Fair warning: this week’s chapter has a short hand-to-hand fight scene, so if you’re not cool with that, don’t read on. But if you are, well, enjoy!

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21. So the Sky is on Fire Again. (My Bad, This Time.)

     I braced myself through our touchdown on the landing platform, then scrambled out after Raj. “We have to stay out of sight,” I hissed after him, crouching behind the landing gears. It was easier said than done: the landing platform was flat and round, with no cover besides the ring of planes perched on its circumference. Any meetings would occur in a heavily fortified bunker on the very centre of the platform, which I’d probably have to infiltrate somehow. Oh, that would be fun.

      “Yeah, no kidding.” Raj knelt next to me, nearly tripping over my coat in the process. Its sleeves enveloped his hands completely, and his shoulders didn’t quite fill out its width, but if I squinted… Shiloh was right, Raj did make a decent mini-me. “Is Nemesis here yet?” he asked warily.

      I shook my head. “She’s likely to roll up at the last minute, to avoid any complications. And she definitely won’t be in her Nemesis gear. Be prepared for that.”

     “Prepared.” Raj snorted. “It’s me and a handgun against an international terrorist. Of course I’m not prepared.”

     I shook my head and corrected him. “You, a handgun, and what’s in your left breast pocket.”

     Raj furrowed his brow, unzipped the pocket, and drew out a delicate glass vial. Dose Zero. Balanced carefully on Raj’s callused, grease-stained palm. “No way.”

     “You keep that with you at all times.” I reached out and closed Raj’s fingers around the vial. “If you have to use it on yourself? Do it. Same goes for Lila. But if there’s any other way… I’d think long and hard about finding a better alternative.”

     Raj stared at me. “What about you?”

    “I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” My hand went to my hip before I remembered that my revolver was gone. “Now put that back in your pocket and get to work. You stay on the west side of this thing, visible from the air but not from the center of this disc. In that coat, Nemesis is sure to notice you.”

     Raj balked for just a moment, then deposited the formula back into the pocket of my coat. “All right. I’ll draw her attention, but by the time she lands, I’ll already have to have cover. I’m separating her from my daughter, not fighting her head-on.”

     “Right. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, check your pockets for a pair of earpieces. We’ll want to be able to communicate on this job.” 

     “Right.” Raj fumbled with the myriad of pockets in my old coat. “How many of these compartments are there? How do you keep track of them all?”

     “I really don’t,” I muttered. “They… they might be on the right side?”

     “Ah, found ‘em. They were on the left, by the way.” Raj tossed me one and slipped the other into his ear. “Hopefully they work.”

     I clipped mine on and tapped it twice. “You hear that?”

     Raj winced and nodded. “Are you trying to deafen me?”

     “No, but it’s an added bonus. You ready?”

     “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said with a shrug.

     “Good enough for me. Don’t be an idiot, and above all, don’t be heroic.” I tugged at my bandages beneath my shirt, making sure they were secure. “I’ll be back once I do my part.”

     “You mean once you’ve gone off to be a heroic idiot?” Raj asked with a faint trace of a grin. 

     “Yeah, that. Wish me luck.” I grinned back and saluted. “This time’s for all the marbles, you know.”

     Raj studied me, then finally nodded curtly. “Don’t let my Lila down.”

     “I’ll do my best.” I took a deep breath and stood. The high-altitude winds tore at my flimsy shirt, whipping across my exposed collarbones and eddying around my bare arms. I was one tiny, exposed man against all the armies of the world. 

     You know, it felt just like the good old days. 

     Before I could lose the nerve, I stepped out from behind the plane and strode across the giant disc of the landing platform. The soldiers outside the central bunker tensed and levelled their guns at me. 

     “Identify yourself!”

     I just grinned, slipped my hands into my pockets, and kept walking. “Good afternoon, boys. Nice to see you’re doing your job.”

     “I order you to identify yourself, and give the necessary clearance!”

     I took a deep breath, trying to remember the string of numbers Raj had spoken into the jet’s internal computers. “Does the code… alpha victor seven two niner foxtrot november, ring a bell?” Because I certainly, certainly hoped it would.

     The guards glanced warily at each other. “Where did you get that clearance?”

     I shrugged. “Need to know basis, boys. Now can I come join the party? Pretty pretty please?” Come on, come on, come on…

     I received no less than thirteen death glares, not exactly a number that boded well for the prospects of my endeavor. But then the soldiers parted and pulled a heavy, concrete door open for me. Three cheers for Beckett Raj and his magical stolen codes, am I right?

      “Thanks a million.” I grinned, strode toward the door, then paused on the threshold. “Okay, one more thing…”

      The guards tensed. 

     “Any of you have a pair of sunglasses I could borrow?”

     The death glares returned with a vengeance.

     “Come on, don’t forget about the whole… alpha victor whatever it is directive,” I chided. “Wouldn’t want anybody to know that you’d been disrespectful to… someone like me.”

     If looks could kill, I wouldn’t have to worry about this whole immortality thing for very much longer. But slowly, stiffly, one of the soldiers drew a pair of aviator sunglasses out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Sir.”

     I grinned and set the gigantic shades on the bridge of my nose. If I was gonna get myself killed in there, at least I’d do it in style. “Excellent. See you in a bit, my dudes.” 

     The soldiers saluted mechanically, like they’d rather be doing anything else in the world. And I walked into the dimly lit bunker. 

     As soon as I stepped in, all eyes were on me. Men in expensively tailored suits stared and murmured. Security guards tensed. But before anyone could ask too many questions, I strode to the exact center of the bunker and came to a halt. 

     I inhaled. Then I spoke.

     “You were all invited to this conference by an anonymous scientist. I know that for a fact.” My voice rang out, bouncing off the concrete walls of the bunker. The hushed babble of dozens of interpreters returned it as an unintelligible echo. “You wouldn’t pay attention to just anybody calling in, so it had to be through a direct channel only a very few people know about. And that scientist who has the direct number to every world leader on the planet? She called offering you all eternal life. You all thought it was an exclusive deal for your nation. But you were wrong. Dead wrong. How do I know all this?”

     I let the buzz of the interpreters die down until silence reigned complete. 

     “Because I speak for the scientist who invited you. And I have more than a few things to say.”

     Suddenly, guns pointed at me from every direction. A hundred betrayed voices barked a thousand agitated questions. It felt a little like what I imagine a press conference would be like. Except, obviously, with AK-47’s in place of microphones. I held up my hand for silence, and the clamor abated about one single solitary notch. 

     “Hey!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Do you want to hear what I have to say, or not?”

      The noise crested, then ebbed just enough for me to be heard. So I seized the opportunity.

      “Life-extenders have stretched us out over centuries. Millennia, even, in some cases.” My fingers drifted to the scars on my neck. “They’ve made the human heartbeat something to be haggled over in the stock market, something that can be bought and sold and thrown away for a quantifiable monetary loss. They’ve turned bankruptcy into death and war into chess. And that’s not how it’s meant to be.”

     Terse, sharp whispers dominated the silence. I was having some sort of effect, at least.

     “My client brought you all here with the promise of eternal life,” I continued, adjusting my sunglasses calmly. “Her name is… Her real name is Lin Versailles. Look her up. You might have to dig pretty deep into the past. But she’s there.”

     Instantly, politicians began muttering orders, and techies scurried for computers like their little lives depended on it. Through my earpiece, I thought I heard the faint roar of engines. Nemesis. I had to believe that Raj would succeed at distracting her, and that he’d be ready for her when he did. Meanwhile, I had to move fast.

     “Do me a favor. Take a moment and try to imagine what eternity would do to a war.” I inhaled slowly. “Life-extenders stretched this conflict into nearly a millennia. We have no idea why we’re fighting any more. But the moment any one nation stops fighting, they risk being at the mercy of the rest. So the war rages on, and nobody has the guts to drop out. That’s just what happens with extenders. Imagine what would happen to a war if the soldiers… never died.”

     The murmur was divided, now. They were horrified at me, but something interesting was clearly going down on their screens, as well.

     “Actually, the prospect of an endless war might sound pretty nice to you politicians,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t sound nice to Moriah Shiloh. Your war burned her home down, created the Blacklung, and killed her just as she was coming to terms with her father’s legacy. It doesn’t sound nice to Beckett Raj. Your war took his leg, his relationship with his wife, the peace behind his eyes. It doesn’t sound nice to me, either.”

     The platform shuddered. A new jet had just touched down. I had to move fast.

     “Lin Versailles? I wasn’t exactly telling the truth, earlier. I don’t speak for her. Because she’s a monster.” I stepped forward and stared down a gaggle of computer techs. “You just traced her history down two completely different routes, didn’t you? One side is Lin the optimistic scientist, the one who searched for and found the secret to eternal life. But the other… is Nemesis.”

     Even the interpreters fell silent at the mention of that name.

     “Nemesis is willing to make the world immortal at any cost.” I clenched my hands into fists. “She’s willing to kill and kill in order to terrify people into demanding her formula. She’s willing to turn this war into an eternal stalemate, warping minds and destroying homes, all while the soldiers can never, ever leave the hell they’ve created. But I’m not willing to let her do that. I’m not.”

     My earpiece crackled to life. “Eli, she’s here, she’s…” Then a gunshot echoed from inside my earpiece, cutting him off.

     Now that I look back on it, that was probably the exact moment when our carefully arranged plan shattered into a million shiny little pieces. 

     I steeled myself and kept speaking, knowing that nobody else could’ve heard that shot through the bunker’s thick walls. “Nemesis is here. She’s going to try to force the formula down all of your throats.  But she’s not cornering the market, not by a long shot. I have a vial of the formula, which I am going to keep safe even if it kills me. And I will hand it over if and only if all my conditions have been met.”

     Through my earpiece, I heard a plane’s engines roaring to life. Another gunshot rang out. Then… a dull thud. I didn’t want to wonder what it had come from. 

    I couldn’t afford to be distracted.

     “You put Nemesis behind bars,” I snapped. “You stop this war. You create a world that’s ready to deal with itself for forever. Then and only then will I call another one of these conferences. Then and only then will I give you the formula. And I’ll give it to you on one more condition. You have to warn people that eternal life is a burden, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. And you cannot and will not make the formula mandatory.”

     All was silent. Then behind me, I heard a door swing open, and the familiar clack of boots on hard ground rang out. Slowly, she started clapping. “Quite the show, Eli. Quite the show.”

     I turned to see Lin, dressed to the nines in a stark black and white suit. A halo of vermillion sunset brilliance streamed in through the open door behind her, and her crimson hair caught the light like a forest catches fire.  Something shapeless and ragged was draped over her arm, and before I could make it out, she flung it at my feet. 

      When recognition hit me, my heart nearly stopped. It was my coat. And it was stained red with the blood of Beckett Raj. 

     “Where’s Lila,” I snarled, bile rising in my throat. I didn’t want to look at the stained heap on the ground in front of me. I couldn’t. “Where is she?”

     Lin sighed and slipped her hands into her suit pockets, and only then did I notice the crimson stain on the left side of her shirt. Blood. Her blood. She’d been shot through the heart, and yet she was standing right in front of me. She’d taken the formula, she had to have, there was no other explanation for what I was looking at.

    Lin Versailles was immortal.

     “You’ll be happy to know that I allowed Raj to send her away on the fastest jet he could find,” she said calmly. “Its autopilot should set her down safe and sound in Chicago in about three and a half hours. Yes, Lila’s father died for something noble, in the end. She’ll be comforted to know that.”

     “You shot him,” I rasped. “You shot him.”

     “And dumped his body over the edge into the Atlantic,” Lin finished for me. Her irises were glowing coronas around the twin eclipses of her pupils. “Any questions?”

     I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. It was like the same moment kept repeating over and over again. My men. My mother. Moriah. Meredith. Now Raj. I couldn’t do this.

     Yes, soldier. Raj’s voice was strong. Yes, you can. 

     “You’re not going to win this.” I stood my ground. “They know who you are. They won’t deal with you. They won’t accept your cure.”

     A grim smile touched her lips. “Oh, because they can get it from you, now? I heard a few bits and pieces of your speech. Very moving. I appreciate the change of heart, I really do.” One hand drifted subtly to her hip, so slow that it was barely noticeable. But I noticed.

    And suddenly, I knew exactly what she was doing. I bent to pick up my coat, dipping my fingers into one of the pockets as I did. It was still there. Good. “Give it up, Lin. Or Nemesis, or whoever you are. I used to care, but honestly? I’m done caring about you.”

     “Oh, I think you’ll find that I’m not as insignificant as you’d like to believe.” In one fluid motion, Lin whipped a pistol out from her holster and leveled it at my head. “Do I have your attention now?” she called to the throng of political onlookers.

     My fingers tightened around Dose Zero. I flicked the needle into place with my thumbnail. Oh God, oh God, I did not want to do this…

     “I’m not negotiating with you,” Lin hissed. “Not any more. No, now I’m owning you. You will take my formula and deliver it to every single one of your citizens. For every minute that I don’t have your agreement in writing, I kill someone very important to you. I know the home addresses of your spouses, your mothers, your children, your very best friends. I know their morning routines and their favorite colors. I can kill them all from here. But first… I’m shooting this nuisance. Just to eliminate competition, and to demonstrate that my resolve really does hold.”

     She cocked the pistol. 

     I squeezed my eyes shut and plunged the needle into the soft skin of my wrist. 

     She fired, and a flash of light burst from the muzzle of her gun, and the world warped into slow motion for that instant. And then everything happened unbelievably quickly.

     My heart pumped once. The formula raced through every vein, cell, and nerve of my body. A searing sun blossomed into existence inside me. The hole in my chest burned with an overload of energy, and then suddenly, I could feel it closing. I could hear the breathing of every person in the bunker. I could see every speck of dust on every thread on every shirt. In that electrified instant, I was a newborn god. 

     And then I was back inside time, and the bullet tore through my head. 

     I blinked. Blood ran into my eyes. But I didn’t feel pain. 

     “The formula is in my bloodstream,” I found myself calling out. My voice felt like fire in my throat. “When the world is ready for it, we’ll find a way to get it back out. Until then? I’ll be waiting.”

     Lin cursed under her breath. “You really did it. You really took it.”

     I glanced over at her, grinning deliriously. My head pounded. I felt like I was miles away. “We really are the two trees, now.”

     Lin stared at me, genuinely shocked for the first and last time I’d ever see. Then her eyes narrowed, and everything in her sprang into action. She lunged for my throat faster than even my newly electrified eyes could track. Cold fingers clutched my neck. Sharp nails dug into my jugular. 

     “I know I can’t kill you now,” she hissed into my ear. “But I can still make you pay for getting in my way.”

     I tried to gasp something out, but Lin’s grip was too tight. Over her shoulder, I saw a thousand guns aiming straight for us. They couldn’t help. They couldn’t beat her. 

     Not unless she was sufficiently distracted, that is. 

     Squeezing my eyes shut, I mentally reached for an entire library of memories I’d tried to lock away. I could think quickly, clearly, effortlessly now. All the repressed maneuvers, strikes, chokeholds, and combat strategies I’d used in my days on the streets flooded into the front of my consciousness, and my muscles were surging into action before I could give the command. 

     And then it was a free-for-all. 

     I was faster, stronger, more furious than ever. But so was Lin. I wrenched away from her grip, drove my fist into her chin, took an elbow to the ribcage, felt my ribs crack, felt my sunglasses crack, tried to sweep her legs, got my own legs swept in the process, lurched forward, clutched at something, anything on my way down, closed my fingers around something metal…

     And then I was on the ground with the gun and Lin was above me and I shot. 

     But she just kept coming. Her boot collided with my head. I shot again. It hit her square in the eye. Half-blind, face streaming red, Lin just kept coming. I fired again, and again, and again. She wouldn’t die. She couldn’t die. 

     And then I remembered that I didn’t need her to. 

    I unloaded the rest of the clip straight into her femur. The sickening crack of splintering bone rang out above the roar of gunshots. 

     “That was for Raj,” I hissed through bloodied lips. 

     With a roar, Lin crumpled to her knees on top of me, fists at the ready, intent with a laser focus on ending me once and for all.

     But like I said. All I needed to do was distract her. 

     A million hands seized Lin from a million different directions, dragging her off me as she shrieked and lashed out. But not even her strength could break free of the myriad of highly trained guards swarming her from all sides. I saw her hands clawing at everything she could reach. And then… I saw one disappear into her coat. 

     Of course she’d have a last resort.

     The platform suddenly shuddered, and the echoes of some awful roar reverberated against the claustrophobic walls of the bunker. Something had exploded outside. Something big. Everyone froze as the echoes died down to silence.

     “Get. Off. Of. Me.” Lin’s voice quivered with fury. “Get off me, or I blow every single one of your planes and leave you stranded in this hellscape until I can rip every single heart in this bunker out, one by one by one.”

     I clenched my jaw, struggling to my feet. “You can’t do that,” I managed. “The platform can’t handle that, you’ll rip this thing apart, you’ll kill us all!”

     I saw her teeth flash white. “Not all of us.” Then she smashed the button. 

     The sound of distant thunder erupted into a roar from every direction. The landing platform shuddered, creaked, splintered beneath my feet. The explosions were tearing it to tatters. Fire burst in from the shattered walls of the bunker. Red hot flames, pitch black smoke, the indigo blue of the night sky above as the roof caved in around me. 

     I still remember that last moment: locking eyes with Lin and watching the look of unadulterated triumph in those twin pools of void. She was really gone. She really didn’t care about who lived or died any more. She was just an unstoppable, immovable, unrelenting force of nature. And her will had been done. 

     My vision faded to white before I could feel the fall.

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(image credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/295619163040783086/ )