The Deadliest Earthling Read online

  The notion that this man could share the sadness he felt for his parents’ end left a bad taste in Johnny’s mouth.

  “But I could never figure out what went wrong. In any case, I knew then that I was done with operational support. So I transferred to security. As an officer, I paid many visits to your friend’s father, Tobias.”

  Johnny felt a pang of pity. He was referring to Sarah’s stepfather, who suffered from PTSD. He must’ve intervened to stop him from hurting Sarah or her mother.

  “I befriended Tobias, and, in time, he introduced me to his theories of how Mars’s appearance in our sky would lead to the end of the world. And you know what, they weren’t so crazy.”

  Officer Harrison pointed skyward. Johnny followed his finger, knowing instantly to look for the red planet. It was just large enough to notice.

  “So then why aren’t we all dead?” Johnny asked defiantly.

  “In due time,” Officer Harrison said. “Until then, I have to raise my flags.”

  Johnny’s face crinkled in confusion. The man was making less and less sense. He seemed the right sort of crazy to be responsible for the bomb underneath the high school. Somehow, he must’ve forced Durmet into doing it for him. Which made Johnny wonder…

  “If you work at the police station, why did you break into the evidence room?”

  Officer Harrison grinned sinisterly. “Oh, I didn’t. I only reported a break-in to distract everyone. Meanwhile, I inserted a micro-radio on your Conifer that broadcasts a signal to the Anunnaki. We used to have such great technology before they came.”

  Johnny gritted his teeth, pulled up his Conifer and examined it closely. The officer pointed. Sure enough, he noticed a small metal square latched on among the many tiny scaffolds jutting all across the gem, like the seeds of a pinecone. He scrapped if off with his finger, and crushed it. All the years of keeping New Bagram’s existence a secret. Of setting safeguard upon safeguard to avoid detection by the Anunnaki. And now a single deluded police officer had accomplished the unthinkable. Because if the Anunnaki knew the Conifer’s location, then New Bagram was doomed.

  Johnny slapped his hand to his holster, drew his pistol free, and leveled it at Officer Harrison’s chest. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

  Officer Harrison barely flinched. “It wouldn’t be very appropriate for the Keeper, our hero, to go and shoot a police officer. More than that, only I know the location of an antidote.”

  “Antidote?”

  “Didn’t you feel that pinch? I poisoned you.”

  Chapter 8

  Johnny’s body shuddered with weakness.

  Officer Harrison revealed the tiny syringe on his palm. Some sort of adhesive kept the flat end of the needle glued to his skin.

  “Hand me your pistol,” Officer Harrison said.

  Johnny had no choice, and he obeyed. The officer slung it onto a random rooftop. “Good. Now, this is your conundrum. I’ve been stalling to allow the poison to spread through your body. And it surely has. I will tell you the location of the vial after you complete your obstacle course run. But if you rush through it, the poison will spread even faster, killing you. In fact, you’ll have to go slow.”

  “Why?” Johnny asked, inhaling deeply. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Officer Harrison mocked. He gestured for them to walk toward the obstacle course. They did, and he explained. “Suffice to say, it’s your own fault. You had so much potential that you squandered. Not a month went by in the office that I didn’t hear of you either ditching a class, starting a fight, getting drunk, or vandalizing a building. They call you the Keeper, but you don’t deserve that title.”

  There was no good way to respond to that. Deep down, Johnny knew he had never quite lived up to his potential. But he also feared that no matter how hard he tried, he might never escape his parents’ shadow. Years of training under Orun had taught him that if he truly wanted to do that, he had to sacrifice friendships and give his life up to a single cause. That he was not ready to do.

  “What will embarrassing me at the obstacle course accomplish?” Johnny asked. It was all he could think to say.

  “Simple. A few misguided citizens still act like you’re worth believing in. I want them to know the truth.”

  Johnny peered at the gravel enclosure a hundred feet up the road and the cumbersome structures that resided inside it. A number of spectators crowded around the gravel. Ornamenting the path was a series of wooden beam, wall, and rope structures. He couldn’t believe he was really going to carry out this man’s wishes.

  “What about Durmet? Was he your accomplice?”

  “As a police officer, I know a lot of people’s little secrets. Very easy to blackmail someone into doing my dirty work. Even easier to erase loose ends.”

  So Durmet didn’t commit suicide after all. Meaning Officer Harrison had also burned Tobias’s papers on Mars. That Johnny couldn’t explain away so easily.

  “Did you burn Tobias’s files, too?”

  Officer Harrison fought back a laugh, seemingly understanding his inquiry all too well. “Can’t justify that with any real strategy. I just wanted to piss him off.”

  They closed in on the throng of spectators surrounding the obstacle course. Officer Harrison motioned for a pause. “I’ll wait here. If you reveal me to your friends, your drill sergeant, or anyone else, I will disappear, and you won’t learn the antidote’s location. Understand?”

  Nodding, Johnny felt inclined to ask how he could even trust Officer Harrison to reveal it. But the reality was he had no choice.

  Chapter 9

  “Hey, what did that police officer want?” Krem asked as Johnny pulled up beside him, Hamiad, and Skunk.

  “Nothing,” Johnny said, pressing his teeth hard against each other. His stomach was cramping. He reached his arms out and strung them over Skunk and Krem’s shoulders. “Got something to tell you,” he whispered.

  Both of them leaned in. Fighting back the pain in his gut, he muttered, “His name’s Officer Harrison. He should be at the edge of the crowd. Krem, go get Orun and tell him to arrest the officer. Skunk, I need you to make sure Officer Harrison doesn’t leave. Even if you have to put a gun to his head.”

  “What?” Krem asked. “We can’t do that.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll cloak you.”

  “Are you nuts?” Skunk protested.

  “Harrison killed Durmet,” Johnny said in a hushed tone. Then he turned his attention to his drill sergeant.

  “Tonight you will be soldiers, and you can eat and drink yourselves silly at the Feast of Endeavors.” Ibdan’s voice boomed. “But that’s tonight. Right now you still have one final task. Don’t screw up! Form pairs.”

  The rows of cadets shuffled into a doubled-up line a few feet from the first obstacle, a high wall. Johnny and Hamiad were right at the front.

  “Go,” Johnny barked to Krem and Skunk, starting forward. He tapped his Conifer and cloaked Krem and Skunk’s real bodies, leaving holograms standing in their place. No one noticed the difference.

  That left the obstacle course. Officer Harrison warned him against overexerting himself, but he’d never outright restricted him from winning. And he needed to stall so Orun could restrain Officer Harrison. There was no time to explain the situation to Hamiad. And he’d undoubtedly push the pace. Already, Johnny could feel the strain of the poison and the Conifer on his body. He’d have to draw this out.

  “You ready?” Hamiad asked with a tremor in his voice. His solemn demeanor left no question as to his commitment.

  The two of them had met on their first day as twelve-year-old recruits. Most people only remembered Hamiad as the feverish ten-year old who’d wandered into New Bagram from the desert. But that day, Hamiad challenged Johnny with a simple question. Effective range of an MP5 submachine gun? The answer should’ve come to Johnny quickly. But he had suffered a brain fart and lost.

  A day later, he challenged Ha
miad to a race in reassembling a disassembled rifle, which he won handily. That kicked off a series of competitions between them. Everything from wrestling matches to rifle accuracy. From then on, they were both rivals and good friends.

  Johnny hated betraying his friend like this, but there was no choice. He’d have to make him look silly.

  Girls in the crowd waved to him as he stretched out his legs and flexed his muscles. A few classmates and younger recruits flashed him dirty looks.

  He eyed the high wall and leaned in for a good running start.

  “Good luck,” he and Hamiad said in unison. The whistle sounded and they sprang forward, their boots sinking into the gravel.

  Hamiad grabbed a rope first and clambered over the wall.

  Johnny snatched the other rope and launched after him. His entire body shuddered. Officer Harrison was right. He had to slow down. As he dragged himself up the wall, Hamiad had already started across the sunbaked monkey bars.

  Less than a minute they’d raced and he was losing ground. Johnny estimated a twenty-foot gap between them. His boots hit the gravel, and he speed-walked to the monkey bars. His heart raced despite his best efforts to pace himself without raising the ire of the spectators.

  His critics’ judgments diluted the other spectators’ praise.

  You’d think the Keeper would try harder than this.

  Told you he shouldn’t be a Snake-eater.

  Squeezing an inch below a net of barbed wire with the speed of a slug, he resolved to use the Conifer.

  Hamiad closed in on the next obstacle, two ropes hanging from a wooden beam fifteen feet up. They had to climb all the way to the top and ring the bell. To do that, you have to see the rope, Johnny thought, willing his Conifer to cloak it.

  Hamiad jogged to a rope and leapt up to gain an extra foot. Instead, the rope swung as if he’d accidentally knocked it away. Barely stopping himself from falling forward, Hamiad cursed and thrust out a hand. Again the rope escaped his grip. Johnny would’ve chuckled if he weren’t dying. Even the audience had gotten a kick out of it.

  Ibdan’s face stiffened. “Hamiad, what are you doing! Do you need a vision check?”

  Johnny frowned. Deep down, Ibdan must’ve known the Conifer was to blame. It wasn’t Hamiad’s fault. The real rope hung a couple of feet to his left, invisible to all but Johnny. Hamiad was trying to grab a hologram he’d created with the Conifer.

  Over the next minute, Johnny resumed his crawl out of the barbed wire and proceeded to clutch the other rope. He didn’t have to try hard from there. Avoiding Hamiad’s stunned glare, he worked his way up the rope, stopping to catch his breath every few seconds, then rang the bell, and descended. The spectators were left scratching their heads. They expected two young cadets to put on a competitive exhibition. Not complete the obstacle course at a snail’s pace.

  Johnny hunkered down, and crawled into the final obstacle, a metal pipe. A minute later, he emerged, and turned to meet his friend.

  “We did it,” he said, offering a hand. Hamiad looked like he’d just woken up from a very nice dream. He shunned the hand, his face unraveling in anger. For a moment, Johnny thought he might shove him. “Hamiad, I—”

  His entire body swayed, his vision blurring. He needed the antidote. “I’ll explain later.” With that, he staggered away from the obstacle course. He craved to apologize to Hamiad right now. Not wait four years to make a half-assed effort as with Sarah. But he couldn’t apologize if he was dead.

  Scratching his head, Ibdan said, “Johnny Aldrin, six minutes twenty-one seconds. Hamiad Calcutta, six minutes, twenty-seven seconds. Well, this is depressing.”

  As the spectators gave lukewarm applause mingled with boos, Johnny scanned for the tall dark form of Orun. In a few seconds, he spotted him standing behind Officer Harrison. He had dark skin and a bald head. Because Orun was not a human, but an Anunnaki masquerading as one, he stood at seven feet. For an Anunnaki in disguise, Orun made quite a fashion statement. The trim of his brown full-body thobe, along with two peg-shaped earrings, glimmered in gold. Adding to that list was the metallic gold rod that sat snugly in Orun’s thobe.

  Looking stoic, Orun motioned to him.

  “Where’s the antidote?” Johnny asked.

  Orun frowned. “On the other side of town. You won’t make it.” He shook Officer Harrison by the edge of his jacket. “Harrison never intended for you to live.”

  Chapter 10

  After his parents’ death, Johnny moved into Orun’s one-floor bungalow. There, he found the Conifer resting on his bed. His dad always told him he’d inherit it one day, but Johnny assumed he’d be older than six.

  Orun had left a note for him too. Try creating an image with it. He’d spent the next six years training Johnny, crafting him into the Keeper everyone wanted him to be. Until Johnny turned twelve, joined New Bagram’s military school, and moved in to a barracks.

  “Harrison always intended for you to die,” Orun said. “But I may know a place we can find a cure. And I need your Conifer.”

  His frankness coupled with the urgency in his voice caught Johnny off guard.

  “What’s this about?” Johnny asked. He clutched the Conifer and made it visible.

  Harrison laughed. “You’re all screwed worse than you could know.”

  “It would be best if you didn’t speak,” Orun said. He looked to Johnny. “Keep the Conifer out and follow me.”

  Off they went, Orun reaching into his thobe as Johnny caught up. Before Johnny could respond, a silver sandstorm gushed from Orun’s thobe and formed cuffs around Officer Harrison’s wrists. Orun’s Khepers. Mechanical, microscopic insect-like devices that could change and replicate themselves into just about any shape or object. Orun’s earrings helped him control them as an extension of himself.

  “You two, over here,” he called to a pair of combat instructors. They nodded and jogged to him.

  “Yes, Orun?”

  He ripped the badge off the police officer’s chest and tossed it into the mud. “This man is responsible for constructing the bomb underneath the high school. Take him into custody. The Eagle will want a word with him later.”

  They saluted, grabbed Harrison by the arms, and went on their way. That’s when a series of gunshots resounded from a few streets away. Johnny flinched. It sounded too spontaneous to be practice.

  “What’s happening?”

  Orun placed a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “We’re going to find out. Can you make it a few more minutes?”

  Johnny couldn’t understand how he remained so calm. He fought back the wave of nausea in his stomach, blinking to keep his vision focused. “I don’t have a choice.”

  They resumed their trek. Without warning, a swarm of Khepers wrapped around his Conifer.

  “What are they doing?” Johnny asked.

  “Your Conifer started sending out a beacon with its location a few minutes ago,” Orun said as they hurried past street vendors, plying everything from charred crickets to kabobs to shirts as children sang cadence songs in honor of the upcoming Feast of Endeavors. “My Khepers should prevent it.”

  Johnny glanced at his chest, where a silver Conifer hung. Little by little, he could see the silver fading, the red returning.

  “I didn’t know it had a beacon.”

  “No one did until just now.”

  “How’d you figure this out?” Johnny asked.

  They strolled past the unassuming bungalow he’d lived in with Orun. Johnny could still hear his training instructions, about as fun as cleaning Porta-Potties. Always asking him to tediously recreate holograms of abstract geometric patterns or patches of dirt down to the individual grains. And if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get dinner.

  “The same way Bagram has stayed hidden from drones.”

  Orun was referring to a specific freedom fighter hacker, who’d managed to get a good grasp on the Anunnaki’s aerial surveillance systems. Whenever a glider drone flew overhead, it would only ever see a ghost town.


  “Officer Harrison said he put a chip on the Conifer that would broadcast its location to the Anunnaki. That’s what you’re talking about, right?”

  “No. This is something different. Something the Conifer itself is doing.”

  Johnny checked for his tactical knife in his back pocket. It was there.

  Gunpowder smoke rose from another street.

  Johnny throat felt raw at the sight of New Bagram’s command hub. The long, blue two-story office building had sustained a few broken windows, and the smoke was drifting out of them. Soldiers scattered around the building’s dry weedy perimeter couldn’t seem to stand still.

  “They have an antidote, here, right?” he asked, the words slurring.

  “The best doctors in New Bagram.”

  In the front walk-through, the woman pacing the room stopped and faced them. Her blonde hair was disheveled, and the flaps of her tactical vest were open, exposing her dark green shirt. At first Johnny thought it was the Eagle. It was actually her daughter, Colonel Laura Dagos.

  Johnny saluted halfheartedly, staring at the blank wall behind her in dismay. Everything was happening the same way as he remembered the night he lost his parents. Except he wasn’t poisoned then.

  The colonel’s face brightened at their appearance. “Orun, you got our message. Good. We’ve got a situation.”

  “I’m all ears, but I need a doctor for Johnny. He’s been poisoned.”

  Laura’s eyes widened so quickly it looked like they verged on exploding. “They’ll be busy, but we can spare one.”

  “Busy?” Orun asked.

  Laura gave him a long look. “With casualties. The Anunnaki found us.”

  Chapter 11

  As Laura led them past several doors, Johnny let the words sink in. The Anunnaki found us. New Bagram survived as a resistance fighter haven solely on the basis of its concealment.