The Deadliest Earthling Read online

  The stairs stilled, and he began listening to his own breathing.

  Orun appeared, unharmed, and leapt to the bottom of the stairs. His survival seemed like cause for celebration.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” Johnny said. “Did I destroy the drone?”

  Orun either didn’t hear or didn’t feel the need to answer. His expression soured.

  “The Anunnaki have just played their trump card.”

  Chapter 20

  “What the hell was that?” Juan cried, bursting into the entry chamber. He rushed down to Johnny, strung his arm under him, and helped him stand. “You alright, Aldrin?”

  Johnny grunted in affirmation and rolled his head toward Orun. “What trump card?”

  Orun eyed him with a frown, and put a hand to the charred metal stairs. Wood chips and unidentifiable chunks of debris littered the entryway, glowing orange under the roar of fire above. “It can wait.”

  An obvious reference to the fact that they needed to reseal the entrance to the bunker. The fire would likely die by itself. But if the explosion didn’t attract the attention of Anunnaki, it would surely interest the locals.

  Juan helped Johnny to the blue sofa in the main room and lowered him on gently. “Was it the Anunnaki?”

  Johnny nodded glumly.

  “Stay here,” Juan instructed, and disappeared into the entryway. Johnny listened to him and Orun discussing what building materials they had access to and what could be used to patch up the bunker’s entrance point. A minute or two passed of them racing up and down the stairs, sliding debris and rearranging surviving furniture from the mud-brick structure above ground.

  “Did you have a battle?” Morris asked, reading something from the chair in the corner of the room.

  “How’d you guess?” Johnny said. Just speaking taxed him.

  “I expect that you won,” the Eagle said, limping in from the hall on her cane, a bottle of whiskey swishing around in her other hand. Johnny had to hand it to her, she was an ace at shrouding her expressions. He couldn’t tell if she was relieved, worried, happy to see him alive, or just plain shaken by the blast.

  To his surprise, she approached him until she stood over him. Then she uncapped the whiskey and brought it an inch from his mouth. “Take a good long sip. You’ve earned it.”

  He smiled at the ashy scent and drank. It wasn’t exactly the Feast of Endeavors, but he wasn’t about to complain.

  The next morning, Johnny awoke to a blinking light in the middle of the ceiling. Plus a dull ache in his arm, a swimming head, and a parched mouth. He figured Juan and Orun must’ve repaired the entrance well enough. Otherwise he never would’ve managed a night of sleep without intruders. Even with the whiskey in him. He rubbed his eyes and registered Morris in the same chair as the night before, reading. A single pressing matter called out to him. The Anunnaki have just played their trump card, Orun had said. That sounded plenty serious.

  “Any big news?” he asked, craning his neck from the couch.

  Morris flinched and glanced up from his book. “They aren’t telling me anything.” He motioned to the closed kitchen door.

  In one sloppy gesture, Johnny got to his feet, ignoring the crink in his leg, and barged in.

  A backgammon board rested on the table between Orun and Dagos.

  Without even looking, Dagos knew he was there. “Sobered up, I hope? Take a seat.”

  Out of nowhere, she tossed him a ration bar. Barely catching it in time, Johnny pulled apart the wrapper bit into the stale granola mix.

  “Don’t we have any of that coffee stuff?”

  “This isn’t the Hilton,” Dagos said.

  Johnny groaned. “The what? Orun, are you going to debrief me on last night?”

  “After our booby traps destroyed the drone, I inspected the wreckage. It bore signs of a human touch. Obviously, it was the test that man warned us about. That’s the good news. The Anunnaki don’t know we’re here because they weren’t controlling it.”

  “So the funders hijacked that drone?”

  Orun nodded. “Remember I said they haven’t been used since the Shroud War? That’s because only a certain type of Anunnaki used them.”

  As Johnny chewed off another piece of his bar, the Eagle interlocked her fingers. “What do you know about the Ascendi?”

  They were hyper-intelligent spy-like Anunnaki. During the Shroud War seven Ascendi had undermined dozens of the United States’s covert operations. They especially excelled in devising flawless strategies. They didn’t care about offending each other. Their bonds were too deep for that. So when one brought up a plan, the others criticized or added to it without restraint. In no time, they devised optimal tactics. That’s how Colonel Laura described them once in class. He’d later learned that Ascendi usually came in packs of twelve. All clones of one another.

  “Enough,” Johnny said.

  “Good. We think the Major is running the show. The hunt for the Conifers,” Orun said.

  Of the original seven in the Shroud War, only two survived. The Ascendi Major and the Ascendi Minor. Resistance forces captured them near the end of the Shroud War and traded them back to the Anunnaki during the peace treaty negotiations. No one had seen them on the battlefield since.

  What had survived in a way was their symbol, an eye inside a triangle. Except the Watchers decided to make the triangle a circle to represent Earth. And hence, the Watcher symbol was born, a mockery of the Ascendi’s symbol. As if to say, We’ll watch over the Earth, not you.

  “But I thought they had retired,” Johnny protested.

  Orun nodded. “The Ascendi suffered psychologically during their imprisonment. It’s suspected that the Sinsers kept them out of danger since then to let them fully recover until they could return to combat more effectively.”

  Johnny folded his arms and took a seat. “And you’re basing this on…?”

  Inkblots blacked out Orun’s orange eyes, and Johnny understood. The Anunnaki used black eye visors, a technology implanted into their bodies, for entertainment modules, infrared vision, and maybe most important, accessing the “World Tree.” It was a massive, computer-style network, one with many digital branches and limbs. A few of Johnny’s textbooks compared it to the defunct World Wide Web in its ability to connect Anunnaki even if they were on other sides of the planet. So resistance fighters deemed it the “World Tree.” Johnny had often wondered how it felt to have the entire world in your head, but only the Anunnaki could use it. Orun must’ve spent the night hacking into Anunnaki military documents.

  “There’s something else,” Orun said quietly. “The Ascendi wouldn’t let a hunter drone just get hijacked. Not unless he wanted it to be.”

  Johnny nodded, the implications slowly unfolding. Could the Ascendi have actually let the funders hijack it purposefully? “So where do I come in?”

  “We’d like you to capture an Ascendi,” the Eagle said.

  Chapter 21

  Less than a week ago, he was drinking and starting fights at school. Now they wanted him to capture a damn Ascendi. And he planned to by any means. According to what Orun read on the World Tree, the Ascendi Major ordered the firestorm on New Bagram.

  A little over forty-eight hours since he’d lost his friends. Thinking about them felt like looking for a lost ring in a cold, muddy lake. Everything was obscured by a sort of miserable, dreary aura. Johnny lacked nothing in the motivation department.

  He and Orun left through the bunker’s back door and spent two hours scouring Kandrazi’s poorer district. Not that there was any real difference aside from less foot traffic and slightly worse for the wear buildings. A collection of cinderblock and mud-brick homes, shops, and warehouses with collapsing walls, ceilings, and shattered windows. Others, hosting under-construction signs, were long abandoned. And these were exactly what Johnny wanted.

  Because he needed to lure the Ascendi into a location that favored him. Orun couldn’t actually help him capture the Ascendi
Major, as that counted as hostile action. But he wondered if he couldn’t create a false Conifer beacon to draw in some Anunnaki. They wouldn’t come immediately. Probably there’d be a few hours’ delay as they surveyed the area with drones and resonance scanners. Using sound, the resonance scanners could map out a 3-D image of the area they surveyed, including faces. So he’d need to stay hidden for a while. Not a problem with the Conifer.

  Anunnaki combat tactics were based largely on efficiency, so they wouldn’t send fifty soldiers when ten could accomplish the task. And if he released the Conifer’s beacon from out in a quiet area of the desert, he doubted they’d assume any real threat. Not too far, though, or else he wouldn’t be able to get the Ascendi back to the bunker.

  A segment of three beige, skeletal structures resided in a quieter area of the city, with lots of open space. This could work. Going by the way they linked together, Johnny figured they’d been planned as apartments. Now they were dying giants of cracking concrete, steel rebar, girders, and deserted construction equipment.

  He noted old, shredded mattresses and a few plastic bags packed with clothes. If anyone lived here, they’d no doubt scram as soon as the Anunnaki arrived. As for his booby traps, he had designed them to be human-proof. Strings linked pillar to pillar eight feet up. No human would touch them. But an Anunnaki focused on catching him wouldn’t notice the strings or the stun grenades. The bright white flash-bang explosion would be harder to miss. Johnny gave the unfinished apartment one last walk-through. It checked out.

  Before leaving the last of the three buildings, he picked up his rifle from the ground and clutched it in both hands. Present arms, Ibdan said in his head. Even thinking it, Johnny felt himself slowly salute with his rifle, then he set it on the floor, beneath a wooden board and beside his backpack full of gear. Time to see what all his training amounted to.

  He strolled down the paved road, then through an alley. On the next street over, Orun lingered at a ditch of yellowing grass and freight containers. Farther up, a few robed men were herding donkeys past a row of small mud-brick shacks.

  “Ready?” Orun asked.

  Johnny nodded and pulled up his Conifer. He watched as the metallic coating fell away, sand in a violent gust. Their gazes locked for an instant. The Conifer was now sending out its beacon. And then Orun reapplied the shielding. He picked up a rock and flooded it with his Khepers until it resembled the Conifer. A simple chuck into the ditch would make the Anunnaki think someone had tried to hide it there.

  “Good luck. You know where to find me,” Orun said, and began walking away.

  Johnny let the Conifer fall back over his chest and activated its cloaking. A few more minutes and the Anunnaki would deploy an aerial drone to scan the area. Some Anunnaki engineer would analyze any potential threats before sending out soldiers to investigate. And they would find nothing. Not even him.

  Johnny breathed in and out, the warmth of the air hanging in his throat. The arched walkway of a decrepit mosque offered the coolest temperatures and a decent view.

  By the time the Anunnaki showed up, it would probably be dark. That’s when they performed many of their more important operations, including abductions, because there was less interference from people.

  Ten minutes later, he settled down onto his stomach from within the mosque’s walkway, satisfied with a hole in the wall that let him observe the ditch, and lowered his canteen.

  The hours passed without incident. He paced himself. Occasionally he sipped from his canteen or grabbed a ration bar from his military chest pouch. Men came and went into the mosque but never came close to stumbling upon him. Every hour he stretched his muscles and did a few push-ups. The last thing he wanted was to find himself stiff when the moment came.

  Mentally, though, he let himself drift away. He could still hear Orun’s review sessions. Every night he’d come by his room before bed. Tell me, what did you do well on today? What do you need to improve on? They’d never had a chance to bond. Orun treated him as a soldier more than a son. Even after the Eagle convinced him to commit to training with Orun, he’d always looked forward to the day he could leave. The times he ran away, he didn’t know for sure that he’d return. It felt so good to shake off the pressure and the expectations of Orun’s demands.

  He’d watch the desert hawks, the falcons hunting, and think that’s what people meant when they talked about people being free as a bird. Or the Eagle. She had that perfect freedom as New Bagram’s leader. She could do anything she wanted.

  The only reason he’d ended up sticking with Orun for those six years was probably because his training worked. It earned Johnny praise. Without Orun’s training, he would’ve received only pity.

  And now, the two of them were actually working together. Even if Orun claimed he could serve as nothing more than a “referee” of sorts, his role was a critical one. Johnny couldn’t haul the Ascendi back to the bunker by himself. And that’s where Orun would come in.

  Night and the evening prayer arrived, and an orange glow lifted his eyes to Mars and the jungle of stars around it. He still lacked any understanding as to why Mars’s passing by Earth mattered to the Anunnaki’s plans to activate a doomsday weapon. Maybe Mars was the weapon? He doubted that, though, somehow. He’d be sure to ask the Ascendi.

  Quiet as a hologram, a metal orb-shaped drone appeared over the ditch. Right about now the drone was sending out resonance pulses to map out the surrounding area for any possible explosives or insurgents. There was always a possibility it would send out a citywide pulse and discover the apartment complex was booby-trapped, but given how obvious the fake Conifer’s location was inside the ditch, Johnny highly doubted the Anunnaki would waste the energy.

  He pulled his kaffiyeh up to his chin as a cool wind blew and suppressed a yawn. A sip from his canteen and a splash on his face tightened his senses. Earlier, a few torches glimmered in the distance, but they were out now. Judging by the general quietness of the city, he pegged it to be well past midnight.

  A white flicker in the corner of his eye electrified his blood. He shrank back, his mind jumping to thoughts of a flash-bang, even though those were hundreds of feet away. A blink later, he spotted the massive, dark figures a few dozen meters away. How many? Pushing up from his elbows, he counted eight spread out in tactical positions, arms extended, a few on their haunches. That flash of light was a snake hole. An Earth-based teleportation system.

  He drew a breath, calm and focused. The Anunnaki were fanning out, their slick black visors gleaming under the glow of celestial bodies. Like the hunter drone, they could see him, cloaked or not. So he didn’t bother activating the Conifer. The idea wasn’t to hide, anyway. It was effective displaying of his location.

  He pressed his face up to the hole in the wall and watched the Anunnaki with one eye. The Anunnaki marched at a pace that made checking their shoulders easy. Still, no Ascendi insignia. No eye inside of a triangle, as Orun reminded him to search for. Only a black cloth with a simple white dog and a red mouth, whatever that meant. Something a human had given them?

  He rubbed his eyes, blinked, and studied the scene again. No Ascendi. These were all standard Anunnaki soldiers. Or flickers, as Watchers called them. The apartment complex wasn’t so close to the snake hole that the Anunnaki would detect the flash-bangs or other booby traps he’d set. So what the hell? Did the Ascendi get cold feet?

  One Anunnaki descended into the ditch, knelt down, and retrieved the fake Conifer. Orun’s Khepers dispersed into the wind, leaving the Anunnaki with a useless rock. Anunnaki faces shared enough similarities to human faces that he wanted to laugh at its shocked look.

  But this wasn’t a laughing matter. Without the Ascendi, this whole plan would implode like a dying star. He had to bait the Ascendi. Maybe a guarantee of the Conifer’s presence would attract him.

  He needed to reach his stash of gear. Johnny stood up, tensed his legs, and darted out from the structure toward the alley he’d entered this street from.


  Once he’d halved his distance to it, he swiveled toward the Anunnaki and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Looking for this, you ET?” he shouted. They hated being called ET ever since an incident in the Shroud War when resistance forces buried dozens of Naga bodies in a landfill with ET carved in their foreheads.

  He willed his Conifer to emit a bright red light over his heart. The Anunnaki stiffened, a deep groan emanating from its pack. Many Anunnaki could speak English, but their native language, Nebirian, used guttural noises, variations of lisping, and high-pitched screeches rather than actual words.

  An instant later, the flickers barreled across the paved road at him. He’d raced Orun a few times (and lost badly), but not against his Anunnaki form. The novel sensation of running from a pack of them blurred the world around him. All he knew was the alley ahead. Dark and safe.

  As he closed in on the alley, a whining tremor rang in his eardrums. A chunk of the wall erupted, sprinkling bits of brick and dust in his face. He scrambled into the alley, shooting a beam from his Conifer to light the path. Metallic boots pounding behind him warned of the flickers closing the gap.

  Once he got to his gear under the wooden panel in the apartment complex, he’d have all he needed to beat them.

  A second whining tremor acted like a dog chomping at his ankles. Across the road, an Arabic sign fell from a building awning to the floor. Johnny jumped out of the alley. This time, the air scraped against his right shoulder. Technically not air but a sonic blast. Pulse surges. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t called them ETs.

  He pivoted sharply onto the street, his legs pumping so fast, he felt like they were rolling. Tucking his chin down, he threw an extra jolt into his arms, letting the momentum carry him. In the dim light, the buildings all shared the same form. For one hideous second, he thought he’d lost track of the apartment complex. He sucked in a deep breath, veins throbbing above his temple, and spotted the right one.