They had been created to mine the most precious material in existence from deep within the mountain, but he had been created for this moment. His path had led him here, and he fulfilled his destiny with a heartless precision. Severed limbs of robots were strewn across the ground, filling the gaps between their smoking bodies. Horus had slaughtered humans with pleasure and ease, and now Jeff repaid the favor with hundreds of leeches.
He was panting when he realized there weren’t any more mine workers around for him to destroy. He glanced down at his armor and saw that barely any white remained. Gashes and burn marks covered his body, but he could already see the suit healing itself. Apparently, the leeches had hit him more than he realized. But they were all dead now, and he was very much alive.
Darwin was pulling the last mine worker from its back, where it had been trying to drive its force-field pick into Darwin’s armor. The Apostle crushed the robot in its hand and tossed the flattened metal away from him. The landing pad was entirely covered in robot remains, and Jeff picked his way across them to where Darwin was standing on top of the giant metal door in the ground.
“We did it,” Jeff said. “We made it.”
He couldn’t believe it—in all of the stories he’d heard from the piners and the legends from the vagrants, he’d never heard a story as unbelievable as what he had just accomplished. Jeff wanted to bask in the moment, to breathe it in and treasure it like he had always wanted to when he won his boxing matches, but there was no time for that.
“Not exactly. The mine is a few thousand feet beneath our feet, at the heart of the mountain. That’s where my invention must go.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Darwin smiled—it tried to, at least. Its body was horribly disfigured. Even with the healing armor, Jeff wasn’t sure it would be able to fully recover. It had taken the brunt of the attack while they had descended from above.
It swung its translucent blue sword high into the air before smashing it down into the metal gate beneath its feet.
45 FORGIVENESS
A LEECH WHIPPED THROUGH THE air above them, peppering the ground with gunfire that bounced off Jeff’s armor. Jeff glared at it, deciding it wasn’t worth pressing to kill. He needed his mind clear for what came next.
“I think they’re onto us,” Jeff said. He was trying to be patient as Darwin cut through the mine door, but it was a difficult proposition. His suit benefited from Darwin’s more advanced scanners, and in the distance, he could see two indicators marked as Apostles coming their way.
“The greatest prayer is patience,” Darwin said as it continued to cut through the thick metal at its feet. “I can only imagine the difficulty of such a principle for a mortal.”
The leech circled around and began a second run at them. This time, a small ball of energy shot out from Darwin’s shoulder and hit the leech in the underbelly, causing to crash into the already-burning forest. The smoke from the battle would have been enough to announce to the world they were here if all the Apostles hadn’t known already.
“We’re both going to find out how mortal we are if you don’t hurry.” Occasionally, half a mine worker would try to crawl away from the others and make a sad attempt at killing Jeff. At another time, not long ago, it might have been successful.
Darwin sawed through another section of the metal door, and this time it creaked and sank beneath his feet.
“Into the belly of the beast we go.” The metal door beneath it collapsed, falling away into the pit below, and Darwin disappeared into the mine. Jeff glanced up to where the sun was red behind the thick plumes of smoke and took a deep breath.
He walked to the edge of the pit and hopped into the mineshaft.
After a couple of seconds, the filtered light above him faded away, and there was only darkness as he plunged into the mountain. It felt like an eternity as he dropped through the pitch-black space headfirst. His suit told him that the walls of the mine were nearly a hundred yards apart and that Darwin was seven hundred feet ahead of him and still hadn’t reached the mine floor.
Darwin’s wings appeared a moment later, and Jeff mentally slammed his thrusters to life. It was a jarring change in speed, but it was nothing worse than his previous dive. Jeff floated to the floor, coming to rest next to Darwin’s feet. The Apostle could walk down the shafts, which led in five different directions, with a few feet to spare from the top of its head. The humming and scraping noises of mining came from all directions. Apparently, Bud had not ceased operations during their assault.
Jeff jumped as he heard Darwin move. He whipped around to see that the Apostle had sunken to its knees. Seeing the Apostle praying was a relief. Jeff had harbored the thought that once they had made it to their destination, it might reveal its true self and kill him. He didn’t trust Apostles, and he never would, no matter what he and Darwin had been through.
“It is time,” Darwin said. It projected a wireframe of the bomb in front of him. It was big, far bigger than he had expected it to be. It was at least ten feet tall and a dozen feet wide. It was larger than anything he had ever pressed before. But the rendering of it was low quality; apparently, Darwin’s capabilities for high-grade holograms had been destroyed in the fighting. The picture flickered in and out of existence, almost like it was from another reality.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the incoming Apostles to get closer?” Jeff said. “We could pick a few of them up in the explosion.”
“They won’t come down here. They know we are trapped in Bud’s mine. And they will outrun any explosion from this distance. If we hope to escape from this alive, it must be now.”
“Here? Won’t we be buried alive?”
“There will be nothing but a crater left when we are finished.”
“And these shields of yours . . . they can survive something like that?”
“We’ll have ten seconds while the bomb arms itself to outrun the incineration zone. After that, it will be up to us to survive. Have faith, my brother.”
“My brother is dead.”
Jeff stepped in close to the hologram and closed his eyes. He refused to let the sentiments of doubt reach his mind; he’d turned hundreds of missiles into flowers at a high speed. He knew he could press this bomb.
Jeff already knew the reality he was looking for. He had thought about it nearly nonstop since he had killed his best friend. The paths diverged at that moment: instead of killing Dane, he had decided on mercy, granting his friend his life. There would have been no reason for him to call Darwin, no reason for him to be here with the Apostle as it tried to destroy the future of its own species. He could feel part of his mind leaving this reality and latching onto another.
In the reality he connected to, Darwin had decided not to spend time tracking down another band of vagrants and trying to convince them to join in on his holy war. Instead, the pious Apostle had done what the religious men of the past who it idealized had done; it had decided to become a martyr.
He felt like he was drowning in the other time line, so deep was his connection. But he gasped as he came up for air. He knew what was about to happen. At death’s door, part of his brain fought against his will. Stefani was worth living for. She was tough, fiery, and completely more than anyone he had ever dreamed about. He could help to arm humanity, teach them how to live peaceably among themselves and fight back against leeches. Someday, maybe he could even find Everett again and beg his forgiveness, maybe even give the young man a better life than his father had.