Into the Black Hole

Chapter 36: Digging a Bigger Hole

"Let's make this quick," I say as Felix and I enter the armory that's about half the size of a soccer field. Plenty of weapons, but no humans. "Valentino and Wolfe cling to me like we're ion pairs, and I don't know how long it'll take them to figure out I'm not on a date with Boss. He's boxing in his room right now, so hopefully they won't hear from him for the next hour or so."

Felix gestures toward an intermodal container in the back of the armory. "The nukes are in there." We jog over—past pistols, coilguns, elecs, railguns, munitions I can't name—and Felix enters a passcode into a screen on the door. The door cracks open with a creak. "Here." He hands me a beige glove, from his compact toolbox, that doesn't look very medical. "This has someone else's fingerprints on it. You'll need to keep your hand on the screen while I'm in there, or the door will close and lock. We only have one shot at this. Ready?"

Pressure sits on my chest, but I nod, putting the glove on and laying my palm flat against the screen. "Ready."

He slips through the crack, and I sigh in relief when the door remains open. His plan is to dismantle the master nuke, which dismantles the rest by design. The nukes aren't nuclear weapons at all—they don't contain explosives or isotopes. Instead, each is trained to hover over a specific city in Liansa and disperse NeuroQueue, which contrary to popular belief, doesn't need to be surgically inserted into the brain. The technology can attach to any part of the central nervous system. Does it hurt? Absolutely. But by that point, it's too late; the once conscious person is now a walking zombie.

Fortunately, Felix can loosen the components of the nukes enough so that they fall apart and begin to burn up as soon as they hit the atmosphere. I don't know the melting point of fibronium, and while I'm concerned it'll reach Earth's surface, I hang onto the fact that the rest of NeuroQueue will be too damaged to do any harm.

"So..." Felix's voice is soft, but it carries in the quiet armory. "How is the one-sided pseudo-relationship going?"

"Ah, it's simply spectacular. Thank you for asking."

"He's a very powerful and attractive lad, darling. Some people would sacrifice a leg to court him."

"Yeah, and he's utilizing that power and attraction to create a worse dictatorship than the one that already exists. Why don't you court him?"

"I'm not sure I'm his type."

"Is he your type?"

"He's everyone's type."

"Not mine," I lie.

The bout of silence reveals that Felix doesn't believe me in the slightest, but he responds with, "Alright, then. Who is your type? Blond boys with big, blue eyes that follow you around like a stray dog and execute your every command?"

"I still haven't heard from him." Timour hasn't replied to my messages, nor has he answered his door. It's been a week, and the urge to file a missing person report is strong.

"I recall you told me he was cross with you on Sunday, and that's why he didn't show up to afternoon tea. What exactly was your quarrel about?"

"He fixed the dropship—the one you gave him access to—and he asked me to escape with him. I said 'no.' Not until we end the NeuroQueue project."

Metal clanks from inside the intermodal container. "Honestly, I'd be mad too. He spent an entire month risking his life for your freedom, pouring his blood, sweat, and tears into that endeavor, only for you to say 'no, thanks.'"

"I didn't mean 'never,' I just meant 'not now.'"

"It won't get any easier," Felix states. "He's scared. The likelihood of you dying or persisting as an eternal prisoner increases the longer you stay here."