“Okay, okay,” he sputtered to himself, spitting out frigid salt water as he blinked away the stinging droplets so he could read his screen. The first one asked him to calibrate his vertical ascent by thinking Up. “Goddamn this Jedi crap.” He shut his eyes tight and tried to will himself upward, out of the water. To his utter shock and astonishment, that was exactly what occurred. First his shoulders, then his arms and hands, and eventually even his legs escaped the icy vice of the water. He opened his eyes, astonished, but as soon as he broke his concentration, his ascent stopped. “Ha!” he shouted to himself in amazed triumph. “I did it!”
The text: “Are you satisfied with your vertical ascent? Yes/No,” appeared on the next screen before his eyes.
“Hell yes!” he shouted as he clicked the YES button with his mind.
Immediately, the next screen asked him to calibrate his vertical descent. The gleeful smile of triumph was quickly replaced with a countenance of horror as he looked down at the frigid water undulating only inches below the soles of his boots.
“Aw hell,” he cursed. “There’s gotta be a way around this.” He tried to flip the screen, but each time he tried, he received an error message. “No. Come on!” After a long minute passed, an implacable conclusion was reached: He would have to dunk himself back into the water. His flight systems were going to force him below the surface of the waves, and he would have to finish the rest of the calibration fully submerged. He fleetingly remembered the respirocytes, causing a brief stab of longing in his chest. Would the new nanobots the A.I. said were throughout his body be able to breathe for him?
The face of the doctor with the beautiful smile suddenly flashed into his memory. “The Freitas test,” he whispered to himself. Without inhaling beforehand, he held his breath, hoping the nanobots would kick in and begin breathing for him. Seconds ticked by as his body shook from the extreme cold. Within just a few moments, his chest began to feel tight as his throat started to close and his head began to pound. He exhaled. “Damn. Damn it!” The nanobots didn’t take over the breathing for him.
He looked back down at the frozen, suffocating abyss. There was only one thing left to do. He began to inhale deeply, taking as much air into his lungs as possible, trying to expand them as much as he could before his descent. “This sucks,” he whispered to himself as he kept his eyes locked on the unconquerable foe below. “I don’t want to die…not again.”
His mind’s eye’s instruction to think down remained. Every moment that he waited to begin, his body shook more violently, sapping more of his energy, and limiting his ability to hold his breath. If he waited much longer, there would be no chance that he could make it back up. “Okay,” he whispered to himself once again. “Okay.”
He thought, Down.
His flight system seemed to take control of his body and push him downward, quickly sinking him into the flesh-flaying fangs of the water. He inhaled until the last possible moment. A second later, his head was below the surface.
“Are you satisfied with your vertical descent? Yes/No.”
Craig clicked YES.
The next screen asked him to calibrate flight to his left.
Craig thought, Left.
The flight systems dragged him through the deadly cold water for a few meters before stopping. Valuable seconds ticked by.
“Are you satisfied with your horizontal left? Yes/No.”
Craig clicked YES.Yes, Goddamn it!
The screen asking to calibrate for horizontal right appeared next.
Craig thought, Right.
The movement to the right nearly sucked the rest of the air out of his lungs. He was on the edge of panic.
“Are you satisfied…”
Yes, Goddamn it! Yes!
The forward horizontal calibration screen appeared.
Craig thought, Forward, and the flight systems brought him mere centimeters from the wall of the iceberg.
“Are you satisfied…”
Craig clicked YES.
Backward was next.
Craig thought, Backward, then clicked YES.
“Initial calibration complete,” read the next screen.
Craig had run out of time.
He thought, Up, and prayed that the flight system would answer.
11
Hundreds of post-humans suddenly spilled out of the side of Mount Andromeda, seemingly emerging out of the snowscape itself, their green magnetic cocoons glowing brightly in the darkness. En masse, they looked like a volcanic eruption, except instead of lava, the mountain was emitting fireflies. Aldous, Samantha, and an impromptu smorgasbord of twenty post-humans lingered behind, blasting powerful bursts of magnetic energy toward the transport harriers in an attempt to cover the escape of their fleeing brethren.
The gun turrets of the harriers quickly locked on to an overwhelming plethora of targets and began firing, but it wasn’t bullets that burst from the barrels of their guns; rather, their ammunition was bright white blasts of energy, tinged with yellow auras, designed to disrupt the magnetic cocoons of the post-humans. They were frighteningly effective, knocking person after person out of the air, most of them falling dozens—if not hundreds—of meters to their deaths.
“Monsters!” Samantha furiously shouted as she continued blasting toward the harriers. As her eyes locked on one harrier in particular that had shot several people out of the air, she broke her promise to Aldous. She took a moment to let the charge build in her fingertips before releasing an enormous blast of electromagnetic energy that severely damaged the systems on the craft. It fell out of formation and began dropping, spinning as it plummeted, its one remaining functional engine beginning to smoke as it took on the overwhelming burden of the aircraft’s entire weight.
Aldous turned, his expression aghast at what his wife had done. “Sam!”
Samantha didn’t reply. Her expression was conflicted, but she didn’t regret what she’d done to the Purist harrier or the Purists inside who were about to die. What she did regret was hurting her husband.
A dark realization suddenly took over Aldous’s eyes. Either he would have to allow the Purists in the transport to die and cross an ethical line that he’d sworn never to cross, or he would have to fly out and risk his life to save them. For Aldous, it wasn’t even a choice. He turned and began to sprint toward the ledge of the loading bay, lifting off into the air and engaging his cocoon, shooting toward the stricken harrier.
“Aldous!” Samantha finally shouted. She immediately established a connection through her mind’s eye. “Don’t do it!”
“I have to,” Aldous replied as he reached the belly of the aircraft and began to support it, awkwardly bringing the ship down toward an impending hard landing in the snow.
“Aldous,” Samantha uttered with a resigned sigh. She’d never met a more stubborn man. Even in the face of his exterminator, Aldous wouldn’t sacrifice his ethics. She wondered if there were anything that could ever make him.
She lifted off of the edge of the loading bay, determined to at least help him carry his burden, even if she disagreed with it. She’d flown only a few meters before, from her left, a Purist super soldier flying at nearly 200 kilometers an hour collided with her, driving her body into the wall of the rock face, instantly shattering every bone in her body. The soldier used his prosthetic hand to dig into the rock of the wall, holding himself in place as he watched Samantha drop into the snow some two dozen meters below, her blood staining the previously perfect whiteness.