The sub-basement hummed with the deep, vibrating power of the Gates-Cell reactor.
It was a beautiful machine. A cylinder of polished steel and thick glass, glowing with a soft, bioluminescent blue light. It looked like a captured star, pulsing gently in the dark concrete room.
But the beauty was a lie.
Thick, clear umbilical cords ran from the top of the reactor directly into the ceiling. Inside the tubes, Jason could see aerated blue fluid—the nutrient gel—being pumped upward to the Wetware floor.
"If I pull this core," Hughes whispered, his hands trembling over the heavy magnetic clamps holding the battery in place. "The aeration pumps stop immediately. The gel stops circulating."
He looked at Jason, his eyes wide with horror.
"The brains upstairs will start drowning in their own carbon dioxide," Hughes said. "It will take three minutes. They'll suffocate in those jars."
"Don't do it," Amelia said.
She stepped in front of the reactor, putting her body between Hughes and the clamps. Her face was pale, still slick with the black oil of her digital interface.
"You can't," she pleaded, looking at Jason. "I know we need the power to reach Chicago. But if you take this, you are murdering hundreds of people. You're no better than Ezra."
Hemingway tightened his grip on his sledgehammer. He looked at the floor, refusing to meet Jason's eye. O'Malley crossed himself again, muttering a silent prayer.
Jason didn't yell. He didn't argue.
He walked slowly across the room until he was standing inches from Amelia. The blue light of the reactor cast harsh shadows on his face.
"Amelia," Jason said. His voice was incredibly gentle. It was the voice of a man explaining something terrible to a child. "Look at me."
She met his gaze. Her eyes were full of tears.
"They aren't people anymore," Jason said softly. "Ezra didn't put them in a hospital. He put them in a hard drive."
He pointed up at the concrete ceiling.
"He cut out their humanity to use them as an antenna," Jason said. "They are trapped in those jars, dreaming his dreams, forever. They don't have eyes to see. They don't have mouths to scream. They just process data until they rot."
"But they're alive," Amelia cried, a tear cutting through the oil on her cheek. "I felt them in the code. They're still in there."
"They are prisoners," Jason corrected her, his voice hardening slightly. "And we don't have the technology, the time, or the bodies to put them back into the world. If we leave them here, the Barons will just turn the machine back on when we leave. The nightmare starts again."
He placed a hand on the heavy steel casing of the reactor.
"Leaving them in those tanks is cruelty," Jason said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Letting them go is mercy."
Amelia stared at him. She looked up at the ceiling, imagining the hundreds of brains floating in the silent blue dark.
She took a shuddering, broken breath.
She stepped aside.
"Do it fast," she said, turning her back to the machine. "Please."
Jason looked at Hughes. He nodded.
Hughes swallowed hard. He grabbed the heavy breaker lever on the wall panel. It was marked PRIMARY LIFE SUPPORT.
"God forgive us," Hemingway muttered, taking off his flight cap.
"He won't," Jason said. He grabbed one side of the reactor's handles. "Throw it."
Hughes yanked the lever down.
CLUNK.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
The deep, vibrating hum of the facility died. The blue glow of the reactor vanished, plunging the room into darkness. A second later, emergency red lights flickered to life.
But the silence was the worst part.
From the ceiling above, they heard the sickening sound of hundreds of air pumps wheezing to a halt. The rhythmic thump-thump of the aeration system ground down to a halt.
Then came the wet, heavy gurgle of fluid draining back into the reserve tanks.
Slurp. Hiss. Gurgle.
The Wetware was suffocating.
"Grab the handles!" Jason roared, breaking the spell. "Lift!"
O'Malley jumped forward. He and Jason grabbed the heavy steel handles on the sides of the dead reactor core.
"On three!" Jason grunted. "One. Two. Three!"
They heaved. The core weighed over two hundred pounds. Their boots slipped on the concrete floor. Veins bulged in O'Malley's thick neck.
With a grinding scrape of metal, the battery popped free of its housing.
"Up the stairs!" Jason ordered. "Go! Go!"
They hauled the heavy cylinder out of the sub-basement. They practically dragged it up the concrete stairwell, their breathing ragged in the red emergency light.
They burst out of the bunker door into the pre-dawn air.
The desert was chaos.
The riot had moved away from the Tower, surging toward the Barons' supply depot a half-mile away. The sky was lit with the orange glow of burning trucks. Plumes of thick black smoke rose against the pale morning light.
The screams were distant now, replaced by the popping crackle of ammunition cooking off in the fires.
The cyborgs were dead. The civilians had won the water. But the desert was a graveyard again.
"Bring it to the truck!" Hughes yelled, running ahead to the dead War Rig.
He popped the hood. The massive electric motor sat silent and cold. The fused capacitor bank was a charred, melted mess of plastic and wire.
Jason and O'Malley hauled the core to the front bumper. They hoisted it up and dropped it directly onto the heavy steel brush guard.
CLANG.
"Hold it steady!" Hughes ordered. He grabbed two heavy jumper cables—thick as pythons—from the toolbox in the cab.
He didn't bother with regulators or fuses. He clamped the positive and negative leads directly onto the raw terminals of the Gates-Cell core.
He dragged the other ends of the cables over the hood and clamped them directly onto the primary input nodes of the drivetrain motor.
"It's a hotwire!" Hughes shouted, slamming the hood down over the cables. "We're bypassing all the safety limiters! The juice is completely unregulated!"
"Will it run?" Jason asked, climbing into the driver's seat.
"It will run," Hughes wiped sweat from his eyes. "But it's too much power! If you push past eighty miles an hour, the torque will shake the frame apart! The tires will melt off the rims!"
"Get in," Jason said.
Amelia climbed into the passenger seat. She looked exhausted, hollowed out by the digital battle and the mercy killing.
O'Malley and Hemingway vaulted into the bed of the truck, manning the rear-facing guns.
Jason gripped the steering wheel. He looked at the ignition key.
He turned it.
The War Rig didn't just start. It screamed.
WHIIIIINE.
The electric motors shrieked with a terrifying, overpowered pitch. It sounded like a jet turbine spinning up too fast. Blue electricity actually arced across the hood, dancing between the metal panels.
The entire six-wheel chassis vibrated violently. The dashboard rattled. The steering wheel shook in Jason's hands.
It felt like sitting on top of a bomb.
"Hold on!" Jason yelled over the noise.
He looked at the Tower one last time. The white light was dead. The red emergency strobes pulsed weakly in the bunker doorway.
He reached into his vest. He pulled the pin on a thermite grenade.
He tossed it out the window. It clattered across the pavement and rolled right into the open bunker door.
FZZZZT.
The thermite ignited instantly, burning white-hot at four thousand degrees. It caught the chemical sealant on the concrete walls. Fire exploded into the hallway, rushing toward the control room and the Wetware tanks.
He was burning the rest. He was leaving nothing for Ezra Prentice to salvage.
Jason slammed his foot on the accelerator.
The War Rig launched forward.
The rear tires spun wildly, smoking against the pavement before catching traction. The heavy truck rocketed out of the compound, smashing through the ruined perimeter fence.
They hit the open desert floor.
"Which way?" Hemingway yelled from the back, bracing himself against the roll bar as the truck bounced over the rough terrain.
Jason looked at the compass on the dashboard. He grabbed it and twisted it hard to the right.
East.
"Chicago is a thousand miles away!" Hemingway shouted over the wind and the screaming engine. "Gates has a two-day head start! And his robots don't sleep! We'll never catch him!"
Jason didn't lift his foot off the gas. The speedometer needle was already climbing past seventy. The truck shuddered violently, the suspension groaning under the raw power of the unregulated core.
He looked at the horizon. The sun was just starting to break over the Badlands, painting the sky the color of dried blood.
"We don't need to catch him," Jason said, his voice cold and hard.
He gripped the wheel tighter, aiming the heavy steel nose of the truck straight into the rising sun.
"We just need to beat him to the slaughterhouse."
The War Rig tore across the desert, leaving a trail of fire and dust in its wake, hunting a machine god.