Chapter 21
Rise of the Diamonds
After arming herself with a gun dropped by a guard, the girl joined Taberah as they fled into the halls.
Alarms blared.
The facility was on red alert.
We should have been sitting ducks, given that various guard stations had been positioned throughout the massive halls. Elevated two storeys up, each was equipped with a machine gun. That way, it was difficult for us to reach the guards. However, their bullets could easily reach us. Fortunately, the guard stations we were forced to pass were inactive. It seemed a path had been cleared by the other children of Project Diamond.
They rounded a corner and a host of armoured guards was there to meet them. Then machine gun fire mowed down the men from a corridor to their right. Taberah and the girl ran over their motionless bodies and glimpsed down the corridor to see a guard station manned by another teenager. He acknowledged them with a nod.
Clearly, he was an ally. I wondered h how many others had been recruited in the escape plot.
Finally, they neared a closed door.
The girl turned to Taberah. "Within that room, you will find a backup antidote stash for the Hemoplasmic Nano-Toxin. Our allies dying to have it, pun intended."
"Is that Amanda's office?" he asked.
"Yes," she confirmed. "You've been there before?"
"No, but I can hear the soothing sound of violin music from the other side of the door," Taberah explained. "Amanda likes to create comfortable environments where her pawns can relax in her presence. It makes them easier to manipulate. She loves control, and having an antidote stash would give her even more of it."
"Clever deduction," the girl commended as they stopped in front of Amanda's office. "This is as far as I can accompany you. Should you succeed in acquiring the antidotes, you'll figure out the next logical step," she placed a hand on his shoulder. "Best of luck."
With that, she hurried down the corridor to her next objective.
Incredible.
She had made an attempt to connect with me. Even after years of inhuman conditioning, it seemed some of us had not quite lost our desire for human fellowship. I asked myself if such traces of humanity remained within me. The answer was categorical:
No.
Weapon poised, Taberah slipped into the office and scanned his surroundings: several choice paintings adorned the walls; artificial, decorative plants stood in elegant vases and, of course, there were mirrors.
I could practically see how Amanda would bring Project Diamond's subjects into this room and groom them into polished assassins. The facility alarm was almost nullified by the calming ambience of the violin in the background. That summed up Amanda to a T – alarming, but somehow able to convince her pawns that everything was okay and she was their friend.
There was no sign of Amanda, so Taberah quickly got to work searching for the antidotes.
BLAM!
He had heard the door open before the bullet bit his shoulder, but it all happened so fast – too fast for him to react in time.
BLAM!
The next shot could have been fired to kill. Instead it knocked the gun out of Taberah's hand and damaged the weapon in the process.
Amanda strutted into the room.
How Ironic. Her chic, red dress and composure did not seem to match the darkness that pervaded the facility. However, she was one of the darkest of us all – dark enough to be a child of Project Diamond.
"You really are special," Amanda calmly declared. "I've wanted take advantage of that specialness for myself and myself alone for so long. Percy held to the hope that you would one day serve him without any ifs, ands or buts. Regardless, of all the 'diamonds' I think he feared you the most. So, I kindled that fear. Over time, I convinced him that you'd sooner destroy him and everything he built than submit to his control. Oh, you will submit, but not to him. I will take you. I will mould you. No one will know you survived today's events, but in time, Taberah, my secret weapon, they will find out. When they do, it will be too late."
Power.
It was Amanda's greatest thirst, yet her weakness. She still thought that she could control me and use me to overthrow the powers that be. In her mind, Project Diamond, Division and anything else on which she set her sights would one day be hers with me at her command. That was how I knew she would fall today.
The last thing she breathed before the end would be my name.
Taberah grabbed the gun she had shot from his hands and hurled it at her with blinding speed. She shifted out of the way and prepared to fire, but he had already reached her.
BLAM!
The gun went off as he slapped it from her hand and they traded blows in close range combat. She was fast. She was brutal. She had two, fully functional arms. Taberah had one. Things were going downhill, it seemed.
She managed to get a tight combination of blows into his body, send him rolling with a kick before going for her gun.
He dove behind one of the columns that supported her spacious room as she opened fire and shattered a mirror or two in the process. Shards of the mirror's glass landed at Taberah's feet. Some were rather sizeable. He took note of that.
"Be logical, Taberah. You're delaying the inevitable," she declared. "As much as I know I can nurse you to health, I'd rather not damage you unnecessarily. Why don't we bypass this painful exchange? Then again, we could make this a learning experience: you get to learn why it's better to submit to me."
Taberah picked up a piece of shattered mirror and peeped out of his hiding place. He used the glass to reflect one of the ceiling lights into her eyes. She was blinded for a moment and he rushed her, glass in hand, but she recovered quickly, shot him in the left leg, right leg and uninjured shoulder. He dropped, all limbs limp.
She leisurely strode to the wall at the far-side of the room, bent down and allowed a discrete retinal scanner to examine her eye. A hidden medicine cabinet opened next to her head, revealing an assortment of medical items including Nanotoxin antidotes.
Having removed a syringe containing a clear liquid, she approached Taberah. "You've had a long day. This will help you calm down and rest up a little."
Amanda knelt and attempted to plunge the needle into Taberah's leg. Without warning, he caught her arm as if he were not injured.
In a flash, his face transformed and bore the same inhuman wrath that he had shown Owen.
Fear flickered in her eyes. Then he grabbed her with his other arm, pulled her towards him and knocked her out with a head-butt.
Amanda slumped.
He pushed her off, stood up and dragged her limp body towards the medicine cabinet.
Yes, the bullet wounds hurt. Yes, I was losing blood, but my training had left me with the ability to easily ignore such things.
After raising her head and lifting her eyelid to pass the retinal scan, the cabinet opened and Taberah dropped her aside. He had nearly reached the antidotes when Amanda sprang to life and kicked his legs from underneath him.
She got up and pulled out a small, handheld device, her thumb hovering over the button it bore.
"You didn't really think it would be that easy, did you?" she asked. "Now, you know about the antidotes, so clearly you found out about the Nanotoxin we put in your blood. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out that I can activate that toxin with a press of a button. I hate to admit it, but you are beyond me. You'll never submit to me, will you? What a waste."
She pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
Taberah smiled at the sight of her horror before raising the tranquiliser syringe he had taken from her after the head-butt.
Her voice broke as she stuttered: "T… Taberah ..."
With predatory speed, he pounced and plunged the syringe into her skin. She collapsed, this time for good.
Taberah collected the antidotes and nursed his wounds with some of the items she had stashed away in the cabinet. After that, he took a moment to ponder Amanda.
Eliminating her at that point lacked a certain poetic justice. If she were to be 'cancelled', it would not be by me. She had wanted to use me as her secret weapon. Perhaps I would employ a secret weapon of my own – her own greatest creation, Nikita.
It did not take long for Taberah to encounter one of his fellow diamonds after leaving Amanda's office. The first thing they did was give him a wireless earpiece, and so continued their fight to escape. The facility had been plunged into chaos. To make matters more confusing, one of the diamonds had hacked the power grid and the lights flashed on and off randomly. However, where their captors saw chaos, they saw a well-oiled plan playing out like clockwork.
Humans are funny like that: when they take a hit, or face the unexpected, they flinch. Thus, when the lights flashed off, they were lost. However, my kind continued to fight, dark or light, guided by our ears and photographic memories.
Meahwhile, Percy oversaw matters from the control room. Around him, the technicians scrambled to regain control of the power grid.
"Any progress, Birkhoff?" he asked one of the most prominent technicians.
"Yeah, the grid'll be ours in a few moments," Birkoff confirmed as he worked away at a computer. "You know, it would help if I knew what we were dealing with here. You brought me along to this facility just in case my brilliance would come in handy, but I might be just a bit more handy if you'd shed some light on what exactly Project Diamond is."
"You don't need to know what it is to do your job," Percy coldly declared.
Birkhoff raised his hands in surrender. "You're the boss. Now, we're regaining control in 3 … 2 … 1 …"
Every piece of technology in the control room flickered briefly.
"Is that supposed to happen?" asked Percy.
Concerned, Birkhoff ran his fingers through his somewhat long, slightly shaggy hair. "Um … No. Apparently one of your diamonds somehow managed to create a small EMP with the power grid."
"Is our tech still functional?" asked Percy?
"Yes … most of it," Birkhoff confirmed, "except some of the smaller devices near the diamonds on the left wing of the facility. For starters, their kill chips: all of their kill chips."
Percy's unflappable confidence faltered. After all, he derived his confidence from being one step ahead of everyone else. That was the norm for him. Now, the diamonds had deactivated their kill chips. If they could deactivate the Nanotoxin as well, there would be no way for him to put them down if worse came to worse.
Percy marched over to a technician with higher clearance than that of Birkhoff and quietly commanded: "Activate the Nanotoxin. We're cutting our losses."
The technician relayed the command to his computer. The diamonds should have dropped. The battle should have stopped, but it did not. Every one of the rogue diamonds was still alive and kicking. Percy's jaw went slack as it occurred to him that he could not win this battle.
"Shut down the primary elevator shaft," Percy commanded. "We can't allow them to reach the surface."
The technician nodded and obeyed.
BOOM!
A muffled blast rocked the facility.
"What was that?" Percy asked.
"Charges – detonated over the sewage system," the technician explained.
"Can they get to the outside world from the waste disposal conduits?" asked Percy.
"No," the technician stated. "It's not humanly possible. They'll sooner drown."
Percy slowly exhaled with a kind of resignation. "We trained them to do the 'humanly impossible'." He turned to the rest of the control room. "We know where they'll emerge once they've exited the sewage system. I want strike teams there. We can surprise them."
"Uh, no, we can't," Birkhoff declared, typing away on his computer. "I just found out that they've been listening in on our conversation with wireless earpieces."
"Shut them out, now," Percy declared.
For one of the few times in his life as a master hacker/technician, Birkhoff was at a loss. He knew, given time, he could have regained control of communications, but by then it would be too late. For the moment he had only one answer:
"I … can't …"
…
Kilometres away the diamonds emerged from the sewage system in a river surrounded by forested lands. Some of them immediately turned on each other, knowing that they were their own biggest threats. However, Taberah slipped away.
I reserved my wrath for Division. One way or another, they and their allies would burn. In time, burn they did.