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“New York is gone.”
“What?” Mia said, looking up from her console at the man who stood next to her.
“New York City, I mean. It’s gone. All transmissions originating there have ceased simultaneously, and I’m seeing a huge spike in radiation levels across the spectrum, coming right from its coordinates. Looks like it was some type of explosion.”
“When did this happen?” She rushed to his side, staring at the array of screens before him.
“Just now. I heard something about a weapon, about them being overwhelmed, and then… nothing.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
She looked at the man, seeing the same mixture of emotions in his eyes that she herself felt. Fear, worry, confusion, and above all: hopelessness.
“We have to stop this, Kadeem.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s Rasputin doing? Are his weapons online? Why isn’t he stopping this?”
“He’s trying, but the human operators can only respond to his instructions so quickly.”
“Human operators?”
Kadeem shook his head. “Right, I forgot you’re new here. You weren’t here for the last test run.”
He paused to frantically respond to a few communications, and Mia hurried over to her console to do the same.
“About a decade back, some new legislation got passed. Even though he was relegated to Mars, Rasputin was still deemed too dangerous to be given complete control over his defense systems. His actions are filtered through human operators. We’ve never had a problem with that until now.”
“Well now we’re having a problem!” Mia shouted, watching in horror as more and more signals dropped out, half-written news reports describing death and destruction popping up in her peripheral vision.
“I know! But those laws were made for a reason. It’s too dangerous to give him full control. He’s not human. He could make decisions that could hurt us, without a second thought.”
“Elsie’s not human either! No one seems to have a problem with that!”
She heard Kadeem exhale through gritted teeth.
“You know that’s different. Rasputin’s never been human. He sees things in terms of numbers. Simple mathematics. He’s a tool to be used, but we can’t rely on him for everything.”
He turned to face Mia, looking her straight in the eyes.
“He is not our saviour.”
Even as she responded to a distress signal with one hand, Mia shot back, “So you’re saying there are risks. You’re saying this might go badly.”
She stepped towards the man, gesturing to the screens behind him.
“Things are already going badly, Kadeem. New York City is gone. Fifty million people dead in an instant, and we don’t even know what did it!”
He blinked, leaning back as she pressed forward.
“When those laws were made, they were trying to avoid collateral damage. Making sure that a hundred people wouldn’t die to save ten. But we are so far beyond that now.”
She pressed a button on his console, opening up a live feed of the outskirts of New York. The data showed that the video was transmitting successfully, and the screen was almost entirely black. In the darkness, a scream slowly morphed into a long, deep howl.
“This is the worst-case scenario. If we do nothing, billions will die. We have to take drastic action, now.”
Kadeem blinked.
“Look, even if I agreed with you - and I’m not saying I do – we can’t just give control of the system over to Rasputin. That’s now how this works. There are mechanical safeties that stop him from directly accessing the weapons systems.”
Mia shifted her weight, putting a hand on her hip.
“So disable those.”
“I can’t!” Kadeem threw his arms out in exasperation. “The lock is on the other side of this complex, and even then, all the humans would have to stop their inputs to allow Rasputin to take over.”
“The other side of the complex? Where, exactly?”
“In Building A-5, south of Derelict Stora- wait.”
Kadeem looked at her again, cutting himself off from the answer he had automatically started giving.
“No.”
Mia looked up at him, defiant.
“Yes.”
“You can’t, Mia! You have no idea what will happen, and with everyone still manually controlling the weapons, it will just interfere with our defenses!”
“Not if someone tells them to stop.”
There was a pause as she stared at him, until something clicked and he opened his mouth, meekly.
“Me?”
“Yes.” Mia entered a few more commands on her console, then closed it. “I’ll go shut down the safety system. You tell everyone to stop, but only when I give the signal. We need to time it well, so that we aren’t defenseless in the meantime.”
She turned to go, not looking back until Kadeem said “Wait!”
She stopped, gritted her teeth, and began “You can’t tell me not to do this. This is the only way to-“
“Take this communicator, so that we can keep in touch.”
She looked at the black object in his hand, saw the identical one attached to his belt, and snatched it from him.
“Alright. Now let’s go.”
Mia nodded. “See you on the other side.”
And she took off running.
Mia burst out into a corridor, heading straight for the tram line. She passed a few workers as she ran, but everyone was too preoccupied with the disaster on their hands to notice the woman sprinting down the halls. She rounded a corner, and saw one last person step onto the car. As its doors began to close, she desperately yelled “Wait!” Someone looked at her in alarm, then stuck their arm between the doors, causing them to jerk to a halt. She turned sideways and slid through the gap, muttering a quick ‘thank you’ before the doors closed and the tram started moving.
No one spoke as they traveled. The silence, the dread, filled the car like an oppressive cloud. No one knew what was going on, but everyone was wondering the same thing: was this the end?
The tram stopped a few more times before heading towards the part of the compound that Mia needed to get to. She knew, from taking this tram before, that barely five minutes had passed. Still, it felt like a lifetime.
A frantic beeping broke the silence. Mia looked around, seeing the other passengers do the same as a few murmurs of confusion arose from the group. A technician reached into her pocket and produced a small communicator, just as Mia’s walkie-talkie crackled to life.
“Mia, something’s coming. It’s here.”
She scrambled with the device for a moment, then held it up to her mouth.
“What? What’s here?”
“I don’t know! But it’s bad, you need to get to-“
Next to her, the technician spoke up, still staring at the device in her hand. Mia looked at her as a strange sound, halfway between a whine and a scream, steadily increased in volume from somewhere outside the car.
“This is the perimeter alarm.”
The windows exploded.
Mia was thrown to the ground, covering her head with her arms. Glass rained down around her, and she felt the tram rattle violently on its tracks. She stood up, unsteady, and saw people strewn on all sides of her. As she looked behind herself, she saw what had happened.
The car behind her was gone. The hole that stood in its place gaped wide, edges glowing with a violent purple light. Beyond that, an object hovered, emitting a low hum that was barely audible over the sound of the tram. It was long, black, and monolithic, despite its curved silhouette.
Much more audible than the hum, though, was that same screaming sound, drawing nearer again. Mia’s eyes locked on to an orb of violet light, launched from the ship, heading straight for the tram. Straight for her.
Mia jumped out the window.
The moment before she landed, she saw the orb curve, trying to head for her, before it collided with the wall of the tram.
She landed hard, pieces of twisted metal falling around her. She tried to roll but bruised her arm in the process. Even as pain arced through her body, she got to her feet and started sprinting towards her destination.
She had never been inside building A-5 before. Knowing what she knew now, she figured it had been above her pay grade. Given the circumstances, though, she didn’t think anyone would mind if she went somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
She saw the derelict storage building up ahead, with a number of ships inside waiting to be scrapped for parts. She reached the junction in front of it, and turned south, sprinting until she reached the large metal doors of…
Building A-6.
What?
She turned back, reaching the edge of derelict storage in a matter of moments. Under its yawning gate was a small sign, labeled A-4.
Fuck, she didn’t have time for this.
Mia turned back once again, looking from side to side, trying to figure out how she had missed…
A small storage shed?
Sure enough, building A-5 was a decrepit-looking hut, with stone walls and a simple metal door, nestled between two much larger buildings. Had Kadeem gotten the number wrong?
As she approached the door, she lifted the radio to her mouth.
“A-5? Are you sure?”
“Oh thank god, you’re alive! What the hell happened back there?”
“Don’t worry about it. I need to do this fast. Are you sure this is the right building? It looks way too small to house something this important.”
A pause, then
“Yes. It was made that way on purpose. Far from the center, too unassuming to be noticed by anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for.”
Mia approached the door, and tentatively placed her hand on the handle. She pulled.
It was locked.
“Kadeem, the door’s locked. What- oh, there’s a code.”
She reached over to the keypad next to the door, made of a bland metal, the same boring shade of grey as the rest of the building.
“Shit, right, it’s…” there was a pause on the other end, and then Kadeem’s voice came through again.
“45192.”
Mia punched the code in as quickly as she could, muttering a “Thanks” into the radio, and wrenched the door open.
Inside, lit by a single light, was an industrial-looking switch on the opposite wall. Mia stepped tentatively in, looking around, but found the room to be otherwise completely empty.
“I’m inside, Kadeem. Are you ready?”
“Yep. It took some convincing, but we’re all ready here.”
“Okay, I-“
In the distance, Mia heard something. An inhuman cry, echoing through the compound, multiplying as it bounced off the walls.
Wait.
That wasn’t an echo.
As she poked her head outside, Mia could hear them distinctly. Multiple sources, drawing closer, screaming together in a discordant unison.
She didn’t wait to see what the noise was coming from. She leapt back inside, placed her hand on the lever, and yelled into the radio.
“Ready? Three, two, one, now!”
She yanked the lever downwards, the light above her head flickering as she did so.
Nothing happened.
The screams were louder now. Somehow more numerous than before. Against her better judgement, Mia peeked out the door, looking around, until she saw the source of the sound. She immediately wished she hadn’t.
A horde of creatures were running full tilt down the road. Humanoid, but so clearly inhuman, the creatures has no eyes. In fact, that didn’t even seem to have skin. They were nearly skeletal, but had claws and long, sinewy muscles. Mia would have run for her life just from seeing them, if not for one simple fact.
Their screams, filling the air and burrowing deep into her bones, had frozen her with fear.
Even as they drew closer, Mia could not find it within herself to move her body, to take a single step, to just run.
The creatures were almost upon her now, just a few lengths away, and Mia could feel nothing but fear and despair.
And then the creatures closest to her turned to ash.
As the first row fell and crumbled, more flames sprung up from the ground, a deep red that turned into a thick black smoke as it rose. Where the flames touched the monsters, they burned straight through the bone. They kept charging, but within mere moments the horde of monsters had been reduced to ashes on the ground and smoke in the sky.
“The Hades Flame.” Mia whispered, awed.
It was an experimental weapon, one of many that had been under development. Apparently it had been installed here, for defense or testing. Given the risks of its use, though, the only one with the permissions to activate it was…
Rasputin.
Mia turned, stepping out of the building, and looked at the Warmind. As always, his silhouette dominated the martian skyline. But now, something was different. All around him, machines were humming to life. Huge barrels lifted towards the sky. A cannon fired, launching a Warsat into orbit. Beneath her feet, she could feel the ground rumble as some unknown weapon rumbled into motion.
On Earth, and all across the solar system, she knew the same thing was happening.
Her radio crackled, and Kadeem’s voice buzzed through.
“You did it! We’ve handed control over to Rasputin. He’s already using dozens of times more weapons than we could, and more are coming online every second.”
There was a pause, and Mia looked up at the sky. At Earth.
“Mia, we may have just saved humanity.”
For the first time since this all started, Mia allowed herself to feel what she thought she would never feel again: Hope.