Then it hit him.
For the first time in his life, freedom was within his grasp. Not the niggardly little range of choices offered up by his Earth. Beefie Cheesie or Tater Cheesie. Standing room on the sidewalk or in the stairwell. Cremation or mass grave. This was elemental, limitless.
As he’d driven through the gap in the ridge, out onto the plain, Connors had taken stock of himself. Like most of the other members of the team, he had people waiting for him on the Earth sidein his case, legions of relatives he felt no kinship to. Lovers he didn’t love. Friends whose affection depended on what he could do for them. His career as a geologist had been reduced to looking for ways to turn rock into a hamburger that poisoned people more slowly. And worst of all, there was his military service, portions of which hung around his neck like a fifty-pound weight.
What he’d done in the name of FIVE during the Consumer Rebellion would never wash away. Those selfsame deeds had probably convinced the CEOs that he should be selected to make the crossing. By the butchery he had performed, he had proved his loyalty to FIVE.
And there was more butchery to come, an entire world to be subjugated and slaughtered.
Connors was by no means a coward, but he had nothing against the people who’d attacked the launch site. Their actions didn’t anger him, and they couldn’t hurt him with their outdated weapons. As he exited the canyon, he realized he didn’t want to catch them; furthermore, he didn’t want to have anything to do with catching them.
How long would it take FIVE to fuck up this place? he asked himself. One hundred years? Fifty years? If the mission was pure bullshit, why act like it wasn’t? Why play the game? Life was too precious and too short to be spent in the service of a cause you didn’t believe in.
When it occurred to him that he had the power to keep on going, that there was no one and nothing that could stop him from doing exactly what he wanted, it sent a chill up the back of his neck. The highway was visible as a straight line running across the plain below. No matter how torn up it was, he could traverse it in the ATV.
A thousand miles.
He could lose himself forever in this wild place, and when the ATV ran out of fuel, he could walk. And when the battlesuit’s power source failed, he would abandon it.
FIVE would never find him. Who was he kidding? FIVE would never even look.
He thought about opening the comm link and saying goodbye, but he decided against it. Why com- plicate things? In time they would come to understand his reasons, if they didn’t already.
When the gyro had landed back in the canyon, Connors started up the ATV and pulled out from under the overpass. He headed north because that was the direction of his home on the other Earth, and he was curious to see what it looked like. As he drove off, he thought, stick a fork in me. I am done.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A second burst of laser cannon sent Ryan, Nara, Damm and Thrill Bill to their bellies on the floor of the warlord’s apartment. Succumbing to a wave of impossible heat, the windows facing the street imploded. The bolt of green screamed through the room, lancing the air three feet above their backs. If he could have, Ryan would have tried to rip the floor apart to escape the blistering inferno. But he couldn’t move his arms or his legs, he was paralyzed by heat shock.
When Ryan opened his eye, he saw that the room’s front wall had a fifteen-foot section missing. Windows, windowframes, wall studs, exterior sheathing, all were gone, and flames licked up from the sheared edges. Behind him, the opposite wall had a similar chunk taken out of it. The corridor beyond was on fire and people were yelling. From outside, he heard different kinds of explosions.
Moving closer to the breached wall, he saw the smoke trails of shoulder-fired rockets as they shot from the windows of buildings on either side of him. The missiles exploded with authority among the APCs clustered at the mouth of the ramp. The armored vehicles absorbed the direct hits and immediately returned green fire.