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  “Awesome. You ladies are back. I really outdid myself, if I do say so. I would be so rich if I wasn't stuck in this ridiculous city. Josh, you finished with it?” asked Gibbs, speaking faster than usual.

  Her father looked up from his workbench, raising an eyebrow, clearly not impressed by his tone. “You know, Scotty, technically I’m your boss. Let’s just keep that clear…but yeah, it’s finished. I was just putting a finishing touch or two on it.”

  With that, he raised a matte-black pistol, a smile dancing across his dark features. He pulled back the slide by habit to check the chamber before turning the grip toward her, nodding that she should take it. The weapon looked like her SIG but with an under-barrel laser sight and a longer barrel extension from the tip. The oddest part of the weapon was the clip. It looked downright strange, extending down farther than normal with a square-shaped base.

  “Exactly what is this supposed to be?” said Rowen, walking over to her father and taking the gun from his hand reverently, her eyes bright. Running her hands along the ribbed, matte-black finish, she could immediately feel that it was different from her current SIG.

  “It’s heavier than normal. what did you do?” she asked, squinting, trying to see the subtle changes made in the weapon.

  “While it may look like the gun you have now, I made this one from scratch using the 3D printer we scavenged from NYU,” said Gibbs, beaming. “That thing is one of the most advanced printers I have ever seen. Anyhow, since we installed the back door to the Russian communications system, I’ve been sifting through copious amounts of data. One of the things I found was a weapons database. It was mostly full of failed experiments, but it did give me some ideas.”

  Rowen looked at the weapon in her hand like she was suddenly holding a serpent and quickly put it down on the workstation in front of her. “I really don’t like the way this is sounding all of a sudden. Last thing I need is something that's gonna blow my hand off,” she said, giving him a dirty look.

  Gibbs shook his head. “No, no, it's nothing like that. We were able to 3D print this weapon from the basic design. The only thing we took from the Russians is a magnetic rail system they were trying to use to increase ft/s, meaning how fast the bullet travels in feet per second.”

  “That’s because it’s impossible,” said Rowen, a line appearing between her brows as she crossed her arms. “There is no way electricity can increase muzzle velocity in a weapon this small. It would take a massive power source.”

  “Oh, we still use high-explosive chemicals as the basic propellant, the rail system just takes the projectile already in motion and speeds it up as it exits the barrel,” said Gibbs, bouncing on his heels, barely slowing to breathe. He then paused like a young child with a secret to tell, looking back and forth between Mary Beth and her. “Your father and I tested it, and we were able to hit 6600 ft/s.”

  Mary Beth let out a low whistle, raising her eyebrows. “Holy shit, that would hurt like a bitch.”

  Gibbs steepled his hands, clapping excitedly and continuing to bounce. “We’ve also managed to make some high-density ammo—that’s why it's so heavy—meaning that we can probably punch through tank armor with this thing.”

  “Wow,” said Rowen, looking down at the gun, her eyes as wide as saucers. “There are sniper rifles that don’t shoot that hard. Where do you get the extra power to run the rail system?”

  Gibbs knuckled his forehead, doing his best not to look at her. “Well, that’s a complicated story. Why don’t you tell her this part, Josh,” he said with a squeak, his voice going up an octave.

  Her father grunted, his eyes boring into Gibbs as he moved beside him. “Coward,” he muttered with a smirk before going on. “The attack on the park opened a lot of doors for us, gave us the data Scotty mentioned. It also gave us an unexpected surprise,” he said with a sigh as he went to stand beside the younger man.

  Rowen narrowed her eyes, watching in fascination. Gibbs tilted his head to one side as her father pulled back his high-collared shirt, revealing a long snake-like crystal, pencil-thin, running down from just behind his ear and disappearing into his shirt. She gasped, repulsed as the thing flashed, going from a bright green to a deep blue, then fading to an odd silver color. “Is that the crystal from the night in the park, the one that you used to control the drones?” she asked, her mind racing back to the moment in the van where she had seen it originally. “Why are you still wearing it? Take it off!” she said bluntly.

  Gibbs looked downcast as her father rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “He can’t take it off. Trust me, we’ve tried,” said her father, his nostrils flaring. Clearly there had been more going on in the last few days than she knew.

  “But that thing was tiny when I saw it; it was just a comm unit. What the fuck have you been doing!” said Rowen, her voice pitching higher and higher as her temper flared, her eyes flashing.

  “Well, that explains why he never takes all his clothes off,” said Mary Beth sheepishly with a smirk.

  Both Rowen and her father turned to look at the busty woman, their eyes boring into her, causing her to promptly raise her hands in surrender. “Sorry, I found it weird that he Donald Ducked it all the time,” she said with a shrug.

  “This is my fault,” said her father, turning his attention back to the crisis at hand. “We used a tablet at first to download enemy web traffic, but he was able to gather data much quicker when it was attached directly to his skin, and after a while it just wouldn’t come off—”

  “I was also able to do a lot more than just scan through data. I could retain it, like I’d known this stuff all my life,” said Gibbs, interrupting, his excitement palpable. “We’re still not sure how it works, but since I’ve put this thing on I have been able to process so much faster. I mean, I’ve always been creative, but never like this,” he said, barely able to keep the wonder out of his voice. “I mean, look, I designed a whole new weapon system in a matter of hours. It's been amazing.”

  Rowen took a deep sigh, doing her best not to pummel the both of them, when she suddenly remembered what had started the entire conversation. “None of this explains where this gun is getting the extra power.”

  Gibbs spoke up, some of his confidence returning now that her father had taken the brunt of her anger. “Nothing worked when we tried to take off the crystal. It absorbs light, heat, sound, almost every wavelength of energy,” he said, frowning as though thinking of a painful memory. “In the end, your dad tried an old-fashioned circular saw.”

  “Not one of my best moments,” said her father, rubbing the scar on his jaw.

  “You weren’t the one with a blade to your throat spinning at 3000 rpm,” said Gibbs, giving him a wide-eyed look. He continued in a whisper, “I think I saw my life flash before my eyes.”

  “We did manage to flake off a few slivers,” said her father, trying to change the subject. “We found that the crystal can complete a circuit like a conductor and act like a battery for whatever energy it’s absorbed.”

  Rowen’s mouth fell agape. “You mean to tell me that there are pieces of the crystal from your neck in here?” she asked, holding up the weapon to examine it. “But wait, I don’t understand. They taught us in school that most crystal is like a glass. They’re insulators; they can’t conduct electricity,” she said, scrunching up her face in confusion.

  Gibbs gave a tiny shrug. “We don’t understand it either, but the things you can do with this crystal are unbelievable.”

  Rowen began to frown the more she thought about what she was being told. While she wasn’t a big brain in school, she did listen and managed to have a basic understanding of things. “How much electricity could there be in two tiny slivers of crystal? I mean, it's just a battery, right, like the kind used for a TV remote or a smart device?” she asked, trying to understand how any of this was possible.

  “It's off the charts,” said Gibbs in a low voice.

  Everyone stood silent, absorbing what they had just heard
, the only sound that of dripping water echoing somewhere off in the tunnel. Her father spoke first, his deep voice resonating off the subway tile. “Scotty and I have been wrestling with this problem for a while now. The enemy didn’t just attack New York by coincidence. If the tower in Central Park is anything like this one, it’s a power source unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and they have control of it. We cannot let that continue. We have to use all our resources to take control of that park.”

  “What about my brothers?”

  Her father hesitated, unsure what to say, his eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. With a sigh, Rowen met his eyes. “It’s ok, Dad, I understand…but if either one of them looks at me the wrong way, I’m putting a bullet in each of their eyes,” she said through gritted teeth.

  Her father gave her a quick nod before looking back to Mary Beth. “Your brothers are supposed to be soldiers. Well, let them prove it. If they can follow orders, I’m prepared to let them serve their country for the time they have left. If they can’t…”

  Mary Beth shrugged open her duster, her hands falling lovingly to caress the Berettas hanging off her round hips. “Alright, that’s it, then. Let’s go pick a fight.”

  Chapter 12: Rytsar

  May 2074

  “Good morning, Negry. I trust you are well.”

  Negry looked up from his work on the floor to find a broad-shouldered man on the other side of the glass. He had seen this man only once before, though he couldn’t remember where. He wore a lab coat similar to the one worn by Anton: white and rumpled, his mouth hidden by a thick handlebar mustache.

  He had lost count of how long he had been forced to remain in the isolation chamber. Having not seen Colonel Anton since he had received his latest crystal, his days since then had become a blur, with little to do but sit and wait. No one came to examine him or check on his progress. He was discarded like a forgotten toy. To pass the time, he had begun carving a mural of the lake and the city skyline, all from memory. He used the metal floor as his canvas, an armored finger as his brush.

  Rising to his feet, he moved to stand face-to-face with the man, a thin piece of glass the only thing separating them. “Where is Colonel Anton?” he asked, surprised by the deep rumble from his long-unused voice.

  “Dr. Anton has been reassigned,” he said with a subtle Russian accent, combing down his mustache with a thick sausage-like finger. “I am Dr. Kolov, and I will be overseeing the rest of this experiment.”

  Looking him up and down, Negry shot him a narrow-eyed glare. “You don’t have a crystal?”

  “I don’t see how this is relevant, but no, I do not.”

  Glaring at the doctor, he began stalking back and forth in front of the glass window, his nostrils flaring. “You’ve left me here to rot for months on end without food or water. No one has spoken a word to me. I’m just supposed to roll over like a good dog now that my master has returned!”

  Kolov watched him pace with a bored look, occasionally making notes on the tablet in his hand. “So you haven’t eaten or drank in the time you’ve been in isolation?” he began. “Have you not felt pangs of hunger or been thirsty? Anything odd to report?”

  Negry stopped in his tracks, his eyes darting back and forth. His mind raced in circles. He couldn’t remember being hungry, only that he hadn’t eaten. He felt no desire for food—or water, for that matter. “How is this possible?” he asked, anger forgotten.

  Kolov frowned at him for a moment before shrugging. “We don’t know. Some subjects have reported a reduced appetite, and we can only assume the crystals are providing you with everything you need, but we have no baseline to compare. No one else has survived having more than one crystal bonded to them.”

  “So what happens now?” said Negry, placing his armored palms against the glass. “You can’t keep me in here.”

  “Why did you stay?” asked Kolov, raising a bushy eyebrow. “You could have left at any time. I don’t think this cage of glass and steel could truly hold you.”

  He dropped his crystal-clad hands from the glass, turning away and looking down at the mural of the lake. “I don’t know. I kept expecting someone to show up every day, and when they didn’t, I simply assumed that it would be the next…and where would I go anyway? I don’t remember anything beyond this place. I don’t know who I am or what would happen to me out there.”

  “You are a giant among insects!” began Kolov, his eyes going wide. “You are the culmination of decades of research, a vanguard to a new world. With you, we can evolve beyond being simply human. We can be more, much more.”

  Negry folded his arms across his wide chest, watching the doctor through hooded eyes. “You still haven’t answered me. I cannot be a giant while trapped like a speared pig in a cage.”

  Kolov smoothed down his mustache, taking a deep breath. “Yes, yes, of course. But first we must test. I have another crystal for you.”

  “Another man I have to tear apart?” asked Negry, looking past the doctor for another prisoner, like the last two.

  “No, this will be different,” he said, producing a clear piece of glass from the pocket of his lab coat.

  “Colonel Anton always treated the crystals like an open flame, never to be touched unless—”

  “This crystal is not like the ones we have given you before,” said Kolov, interrupting. “It has different properties. You will place it on the center of your forehead, understood?”

  Negry could only nod, feeling an odd sense of delight as the doctor input a series of commands on his tablet, and the glass wall slid away with a hiss.

  “Shall we begin?” asked Kolov, stepping across the threshold to stand in front of him, gingerly dropping the tiny crystal into his armored palm, holding his breath.

  The moment the crystal touched his flesh, Negry felt a subtle vibration, like an echo of water dripping from far away. The longer it sat in his palm, the louder the vibration became, resonating like singing glass. “Place it on the center of your forehead,” said Kolov, his voice barely a whisper.

  “This feels different from the other times,” said Negry, staring down at the tiny sliver. “I have come to expect pain from these. More pain than you can imagine.”

  Kolov nodded, his eyes fixed on the crystal. “There will be no pain today, only understanding and power.”

  Negry raised the crystal to eye level, staring deep into the tiny facets, admiring its perfection at bending the light, its dazzling array of color. Taking a deep breath, he touched it to the skin on his forehead…and the world fell away.

  More images than he could follow blinked through his mind, subliminal messages flashing by like a million pictures being shown to him at once. His mind became lost in a swirl of color and light, brief memories of being elsewhere flooding his senses. He saw places and people he couldn’t explain, cavelike landscapes so large the ceiling vanished into darkness, covered in softly glowing crystal, with tall structures in the distance. Smooth and tall like shards of glass, brighter than the sun at noon.

  He staggered back, finding himself pressed against the back wall of the isolation room, his jagged, gloved hand buried deep within the steel, twisting and bending it like paper. Then he was gone again, high above looking down at the world, cloud-capped mountains in the distance covered in blue-white snow. Then in the ocean, trapped so deep he could feel the weight of the water about to crush him. At last he saw this place, the park, the glass tower pulsing with its strange light, and a face, a face he knew too well.

  “This crystal belonged to Colonel Anton,” he said, staggering away from the wall, rising to his full height. His fists balled in fury. “You had him killed!”

  Kolov’s head shot up from his tablet, his eyes going wide before he took a step back, madly tapping on his tablet to bring the glass wall between them.

  Negry looked him up and down, a wry smile coming to his face. “I don’t think you understand, Dr. Kolov. I have been here by choice. This,” he said, pointing at the wall, “c
annot hold me.” Negry raised his armored fist and in a single smooth motion pounded on the glass, his titanic blow shattering the window into a thousand shards of jagged glass.

  Kolov never moved. He simply stood in place, his face a mask of calm, his fingers racing on his tablet. Negry gritted his teeth, reaching out to tear the doctor’s head from his body. His fingers were a hairsbreadth from Kolov when the doctor looked up from his tablet, a look of triumph on his face. Negry found himself frozen, his limbs locked in place. Trapped in his rage.

  Smoothing down his thick mustache, Kolov began to circle him, his shoes crunching loudly on the shattered glass. “I don’t understand how you could know this crystal came from poor Anton, but yes. Seeing you now, it was a wise choice to have him removed from this world.”

  Negry tried to respond, only to have a pathetic grunt escape his throat. His mouth and jaw were frozen in a grimace.

  “We don’t know all the commands possible from such crystals,” said Kolov, stopping in front of him. “But Anton was able to figure out many of them, including this one that we will use to control you from here on in,” he said with a small smile.

  Negry stared hard, his blood boiling as the doctor began humming to himself, once again tapping away on his tablet.

  Kolov’s smile grew wider as he paced in front of him. “It won’t do any good to be upset. I would like us to cooperate with each other; it will be much easier if you do. In any case, we could not go on without some measure of control, as poor Anton was doing. So, for now, as long as that crystal remains in place, you will be controlled, safe, for everyone. Like an old Russian knight, bound to his lord. Now we will begin to bring in more subjects for you, let us test your limits!”

  Chapter 13: Folks from the East Side

  May 2076