Chapter 71 The Last Jump
"Self-destruct in forty-five seconds," the ship computer chanted. Its voice was too sweet for a machine that was about to blow us into dust.
The floor beneath my boots groaned. A metal tile popped off the wall, flying past my head into the black emptiness of space outside the window. I looked at the screen, then back at the tiny pod flying toward Earth. My sister, Subject 703, was getting away with my freedom. She had stolen the only ticket out of this floating graveyard.
"She planned this," I muttered, my fingers digging into my palms until they bled. "She didn't want to replace me. She wanted to erase me so she could take my place in the real world."
"Eara, we have to move," Kael said. He grabbed my arm, but his hand felt light. The violet glow around his fingers was sputtering like a candle in the wind. "The station is breaking apart. If we stay here, the air will freeze us before the fire does."
"Move where?" I screamed over the roar of escaping air. "My father said it. There are no more pods! We’re stuck in a tin can miles above the ground!"
My father lay on the floor, nursing his bleeding wrist. He looked up at us, coughing up grey smoke. Even with the ship dying, he had that awful, greedy smile on his face.
"You still don't get it, do you?" my father gasped. "You can't kill a franchise. Redo Media has a satellite network. If you die here, your data just uploads to the next station. The loop starts over. You’ll wake up in a new tank, with a new name, and you won't remember a thing."
"Shut up!" I yelled, stepping toward him. I raised the silver pen, my heart pounding with a wild, desperate anger. "I am not going back into a tank! I am not letting you rewrite my life!"
"Then jump," he mocked, pointing his good hand toward the shattered glass window. Beyond it lay the cold, beautiful blue planet. "Show the fans how the great Eara dies."
"Thirty seconds," the computer chirped.
Kael didn't look at my father. He looked at me, his golden-violet eyes completely serious. "He’s right about one thing, Eara. The data uploads through the main satellite dish on the roof. If the station explodes, our minds get sucked right back into their network."
"So we’re trapped," I whispered. A cold tear ran down my cheek, tasting like ink and salt. "We fight this hard just to end up as data again?"
"Not if we break the dish first," Kael said. He revved the rusted chainsaw. The blade roared to life, spitting sparks. "If we destroy the transmitter before the ship blows, there’s nowhere for our files to go. We die for real. Or we fall for real. But they lose us forever."
It wasn't a choice. It was a gamble with death. But dying as a real person was a million times better than living as a slave in a glass jar.
"Let's do it," I said.
I grabbed the silver pistol my father had dropped. I didn't look back at him as we ran down the tilting hallway. The metal walls were turning red-hot. Sparks rained down from the ceiling like burning snow.
We reached the roof hatch. Kael slammed his shoulder into the metal, forcing it open. We scrambled out onto the top of the satellite. There was no air, just a magnetic field keeping a thin layer of gravity around the metal hull. Below us, the Earth was huge, a swirling ball of blue and white.
A giant, silver dish sat in the center of the roof, pulsing with a bright red light. It was sending out a thick beam of energy into space. Our data. Our souls.
"Get away from it!" a voice shouted.
I turned around. The blind man, the Buyer, was already on the roof. The saw wound on his shoulder was leaking black static, but he didn't care. He held a massive metal rod, his faceless head tilted toward the sound of our breathing.
"You belong to the market!" the blind man hissed. "You cannot destroy the asset!"
He lunged at Kael, swinging the rod with impossible speed. Kael blocked it with the chainsaw. CRASH! The sound was a dull vibration through our boots since there was no air to carry the noise. Kael was pushed back, his feet sliding toward the edge of the satellite.
"Fifteen seconds," the countdown buzzed in my earpiece.
I didn't hesitate. I raised the pistol and fired three shots straight into the base of the silver dish. The metal exploded in a shower of blue sparks, but the red light kept pulsing. The beam was still active.
"It's reinforced!" I screamed.
The blind man knocked the chainsaw out of Kael's hands. He raised the metal rod, ready to drive it through Kael's chest.
I didn't think about my safety. I didn't think about the loop. I tackled the blind man from behind, jamming the silver pen directly into his neck. The black static exploded in my face, blinding me, but I held on.
Kael scrambled up, grabbed his chainsaw, and threw his entire weight into the main cable of the satellite dish. The blade chewed through the thick wire, and a massive explosion of purple and red light blinded the whole sky.
The beam stopped. The red light went dark.
"We did it," Kael gasped, his body flashing between solid flesh and purple code. "We're unlinked."
"Five seconds," the computer whispered.
The station beneath us gave a final, violent shudder. The metal roof began to tear open like paper.
Kael grabbed my waist, pulling me tight against his chest. I could feel his heart beating, real, frantic, and human.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"With you," I said.
We didn't wait for the explosion. We jumped off the edge of the satellite, falling straight into the open, endless sky toward Earth.
But as the station exploded behind us in a ball of fire, a giant, silver net shot out from the wreckage. It wasn't made of rope. It was made of glowing blue code.
The net wrapped tightly around Kael, yanking him backward toward a hidden, secondary ship that was emerging from the dark side of the moon.
"Eara!" Kael screamed, his hand slipping from mine.
A loudspeaker on the new ship activated, and a voice I had never heard before laughed.
"Thank you for cleaning up the old models," the voice said. "Welcome to Volume Three."