Bard Constantine
Vigiclass="underline" Knight in Cyber Armor
Other Books in the Havenworld Universe
Havenworld
Silent Empire
The Troubleshooter: Four Shots
The Troubleshooter: New Haven Blues
The Troubleshooter: The Most Dangerous Dame
After the Cataclysm nearly wiped out humanity, the remnants survived in Havens: city-sized constructs built to reboot society and usher in a new age of mankind.
However, the new age was not the type the architects had envisioned. The same greed and lust for power that existed before the Cataclysm resurfaced and the Havens quickly became quagmires of political and economic conflict that threatened to destroy the future envisioned by the Haven's founders.
This is the world of Jett Wolfe, a man awakened from a grim past to a darker future. A man without a purpose. But when a masked vigilante dies saving his life, Jett becomes a man with a mission. He takes up the mantle of a cyber knight in a city without hope. When your life is on the line, and there is no one to call, look to the skyline. You just might see a new breed of hero.
Jett Wolfe is…
Vigil
Chapter 1
Jett Wolfe fled from the end of the world.
The silence was the most unnerving part of it. The sky was fire and the world was whirling motes of dust and ash, but the sound of the world breaking apart wasn't the roaring, sucking, explosive clamor he expected. The noises were muted. Rumbles, like distant thunder. The crinkling, crackling sound of cellophane crumpled in the back of his mind. The skittering of roaches across dry leaves. Even the wind was nearly silent, although the gusts were nearly enough to knock Jett from his perch atop the armored ATV truck.
The Armordillo made a lot of noise and kicked up a lot of dust. The tank treads guaranteed they weren't bothered by the haphazard trails of wrecked cars and road debris, and the armored plating was thick enough to make even the most daring savage think twice about trying to roll them over. The ACU emblem on the sides probably helped, too. Not too many were stupid enough to take an Aberrant Control Unit on in a firefight, even in the Badlands outside the city.
Jett was mounted in the suicide seat on top, scanning the dusty surroundings through the scope of his M2 heavy machine gun. Nothing was visible he hadn't seen for the last few hundred miles of the Waste. The road was a busted remnant of an interstate that once was swamped daily with New York commuters. All that remained were husks, vehicle carcasses stripped of anything of value. The Armordillo weaved between the remains, rumbling over broken asphalt with as much speed as the heavy vehicle could handle.
They were running out of time.
He glanced backward. The city dwindled in the distance, the towering buildings just dark bones, skeletal fingers pointed at the fiery heavens. He was glad to leave it behind. The place was a tomb, the remaining residents going out with whimpers instead of a collective roar, huddling in the near-empty skyscrapers and apartment buildings, waiting for the end to arrive. The rioting, looting, murder sprees, and general mayhem was terminated by the release of the Peacekeepers. Anyone committing a violent crime was ruthlessly targeted and eliminated by the black-armored synthetic troopers. Once it was clear Haven Core was sealed and armed against any sort of intrusion, even the most hardened protester realized it was over.
They would die along with the rest of the world.
Jett's helmet crackled. Beef's voice shouted over the line. "Megastorm coming in fast at nine o'clock!"
Jett turned that direction. The horizon darkened with a churning mass of nightmarish clouds. The speed of the formation seemed impossible, but he had seen firsthand that impossible no longer applied at the end of days. Megastorms destroyed everything in their path with cyclonic winds that spewed multiple tornadoes and devastating lightning along with winds on par with a category five hurricane. They were death sentences to anyone caught in the open.
"How much time we got?"
"Twenty minutes, tops."
"How long till we get to the kill zone?"
"We're gonna be cutting it close."
"We gotta move it, then."
"Better drop in, Big Top. It's gonna be bumpy."
Jett took a final look around at the injured landscape. The light diffused, flickering from the smothered sky in depressed colors. Anyone not hunkered down would be torn from the world like a fistful of dandelions hurled from a race car. There was no real reason for him to man the gun anymore. No reason for him to keep looking at death.
He dropped down the hatch and joined the rest of the Hellrazors. Beef, Jax, Jisei, Bozo, Rosy, and Headshot. Jett figured it was the last time they'd be together. Either by the storm or their suicide mission, they were all dead men walking. But at least they'd go out fighting. Raise hell, die well was their motto. Had to keep trucking, no matter what the odds were.
Beef drove the Armadillo. His heavy arms flexed with knotted muscle with every twist of the steering wheel. He turned to grin at Jett with big, white teeth.
"Like a bat outta hell, Big Top."
Big Top. Like everyone else, Jett had a nickname. He gave the orders, so he got the label.
He held onto a ceiling latch, lurching when the Armordillo struck an especially deep crevice at top speed. "Literally. Not sure how much time we got left. Every forecast is different, but they all claim it's happening today."
"The end. They're calling it the Cataclysm." Rosy's eyes were haunted, so old in her young face. Fiery-haired and freckle-blasted, she looked barely old enough to drink. Hardened by being a soldier and survivor, but her edges softened by her youth. She ran with them because there was nowhere else to go. But she looked haggard, run down by the constant grind of survival. Jett couldn't blame her. He kept it together for the sake of the team, but he felt it just as anyone did.
The hopelessness.
Still can't believe Haven Control screwed us over like that. We were promised entry in exchange for our service.
But HC pulled the carpet from under them, replacing them with androids that kept the peace through savage and efficient annihilation. The ACU was disbanded, the collective units left to fend for themselves like everyone else. His team tried to stay together, but between riots, massive gangs, and terrorist attacks, their numbers dwindled from thirty strong to the seven remaining. It wasn't until near the end that Jett understood. They had lost. There was nothing left to fight for. Nothing except survival. And survival took on a whole new meaning when the world was coming to an end.
The Havens were GeoCorp's solution to preserving humanity, but the number of people selected was limited to individuals who functioned in a capacity deemed necessary to reboot the new society after their hibernation period. The rest of the world was left to fend for themselves against near-certain annihilation by fallout from the Skygate Collapse. The economic divide separated survival prospects, with the rich rushing to build hibernation safe-houses of their own, and the have-nots either facing their mortality or desperately searching for a way to rob the rich of their escape plans.
Jett and his unit fell into the latter category.
Raise hell, die well.
"They can call it what they want, Sonia. We're not going out like that."
She gave him a wry smirk. "If you say so, Big Top."
Headshot methodically checked his rifle. He was tall and lean, his skin almost as brown as Jett's. Despite the jarring bumps and heaves of the vehicle, his obsessive focus remained on his task. He spoke offhandedly, his voice lightly accented with a Colombian accent.