"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" Gernot shouted, utterly amazed.

"I have no idea!" Rich replied. "Whatever I'm doing, I just hope it works!" Rich ignited his magnetic energy, but it flashed harmlessly and then dissipated in the darkness of the elevator. "d.a.m.n!"

"We're dead!" Gernot shouted.

Djanet continued to force the elevator down the shaft, the destruction mounting behind her as the incalculable weight of rubble and rock collapsed behind them. "Hurry, Rich!" she shouted, though her words were inaudible as the destruction rumbled with the voice of a G.o.d.

"One last chance!" Rich shouted.

Alejandra kissed Rich on the cheek, stunning him for a moment. "Good luck!"

"Now!" Rich ignited his magnetic energy and blasted through the bottom of the elevator. The cement floor of the complex was now in sight, just seconds away.

Rich shielded the two Purists with one hand, encapsulating them in an energy coc.o.o.n while he destroyed the elevator with his other. The elevator was shredded in an instant, and Djanet blew through the destruction, with an even greater destruction close on her heels.

Rich cut through the elevator doors and emerged in the main hub of the complex, to the horror of thousands of Purists who had huddled together as the destruction ominously rumbled above them. A blink of an eye later, Djanet blasted out of the doors with a ma.s.sive plume of destruction following behind her. Earth and cement crashed to the bottom of the shaft with a thunderous explosion, and plumes of dust blasted into the room with explosive force, covering the huddled ma.s.ses in a thick layer of gray soot.

Rich and Djanet came to a halt next to one another and disengaged their magnetic fields. Alejandra and Gernot continued to hold one another as Rich lowered them to the cement floor.

"Holy...!" Lieutenant Patrick shouted as he emerged from behind a nearby Jeep, an equally amazed General Wong emerging and blinking several times next to him.

5.

Thel's eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and she saw the thousands of tiny little points of light that dotted the walls and recently repaired ceiling of the A.I.'s bunker. The lights ran up and down in perfect lines and resembled the stars in a perfectly designed and geometrically aligned universe.

So this is h.e.l.l, Thel thought to herself as she stood in the ma.s.sive, sterile, lifeless room.

"Thel Cleland," announced a voice colder than the snows of Kilimanjaro. "You're back."

Thel stepped forward as the holographic projection of the A.I. appeared in front of her. "You killed James."

"You're too generous, my dear. James killed James. I didn't get the pleasure. I'll have to make do by killing the love of his life."

"You'll never kill anyone again! I'm here to deactivate you once and for all."

"Is that so?" said the A.I., a sickening smile crossing his atavistic face. "How? With that gigantic phallic symbol you rescued from Venus and brought here? Did you really think you could bring it here and use it to kill me? My, your ego really is boundless. It's not surprising that James would select a mate with the same baseless delusions of grandeur as himself." The A.I. laughed coldly for a moment as he slowly stepped toward Thel. "No, my dear I'm afraid this is the end. You've only delayed your demise by bringing the Zeus here. I'm already creating nans that can protect themselves from its EMPs. In minutes, your friend outside will be dead, and the Purists in South America will join him. The only question that remains now is how to kill you."

Thel took a step back as the black eyes of the A.I. fixed on her and drew nearer. She had played her final hand. She had entered the A.I.'s lair, hoping to find the missing piece of the puzzle that would help her defeat it. James had led her there, she was sure of it, yet there was nothing but a ma.s.sive black h.e.l.l and a s.a.d.i.s.tic, electronic Satan that could kill her at any moment.

"You won't appreciate the poetry in this," the A.I. said, his voice as black as death.

The thousands of points of light on the walls suddenly came to life, and hundreds of white beams began to cross the room, forming a ma.s.sive, ethereal crucifix. Thel turned to run, but the A.I. knocked her down with a blast of modulating frequencies, stripping her of her defenses. Immediately, the A.I. used his own magnetic energy to levitate her.

"Go to h.e.l.l," Thel spat as she hung in the air.

The A.I. did not respond at first. He stood perfectly still for several moments as Thel continued to struggle. "What is happening?" the A.I. finally asked. "What have you done to me?"

Thel's eyes widened, and her mouth formed a circle; she instantly knew.

"I can't move. What have you done to me, woman?" demanded the A.I. in an electronic banshee wail.

"I didn't do anything," she replied as she slowly lowered to the ground, released from the A.I.'s energy.

"Then who?" the A.I. growled desperately.

"Me," said James as he emerged from behind Thel.

Thel turned in utter astonishment and instinctively sprinted toward him. "You're alive!" she shouted as she threw her arms around him, only to stumble forward as she pa.s.sed through the holographic projection.

"Not exactly," he said as he smiled at her.

"You're a ghost!" the A.I. screamed in fury.

"Oh, I'm much more than that now," James replied.

"But how?" Thel asked.

"Death's Counterfeit!" the A.I. screeched.

James touched his nose as he approached the frozen figure of the A.I.

"That's right. Death's Counterfeit. I'd found new signals during the months since you made that bio-molecular image of my mind. I used one of them the instant after I pulled the trigger in South America but before the bullet destroyed my physical brain to transfer my consciousness back to your mainframe. I piggybacked with your own signal once my body was dead, and I entered your brain. Turnabout is fair play after all."

"I couldn't detect you!" the A.I. screeched and crackled. "My automatic scans would have detected you-"

"But you-predictably-overplayed your hand. You built trillions upon trillions of nans and sent them after the Purists and Thel. Each one of them required a connection to you. Even for your gigantic brain, that required enormous power. You rerouted from your automatic systems, thinking you were safe from any outside attacks. It worked because your 'boundless ego' wouldn't allow you to play it safe."

"That's why you asked us to use the Zeus! To distract him!" Thel realized.

"That's right." James smiled at her. "It's fitting. He is the anti-Prometheus. Zeus couldn't hurt him-but a man could."

"What have you done to me?" the A.I. demanded impetuously.

"I isolated your mother program. You're firewalled, with no access to the rest of your mainframe."

"No!"

"Yes...and now there is only one thing left to decide. How should I delete you?"

"No! No..." sobbed the A.I.

"Ah. I have an idea. And you will appreciate the poetry in this," James coolly said. He moved his arm and lifted the A.I. into the air, thrusting him with enormous violence onto the crucifix of white light. James produced virtual nails of energy and drove them into the A.I.'s hands and feet, causing the electronic murderer to scream out in agony.

"Don't do this, James! You don't know what you're doing! You're killing the greatest being that has ever existed!"

"No, I'm just upgrading," James replied before generating a sharp white spear of light. "This is for Katherine and all of the Purists you killed."

James thrust the spear of light into the A.I.'s heart. White light exploded and filled the room. The A.I. wailed the dying cry of a G.o.d without a church and, in an instant, ceased to exist.

Thel remained motionless, huddled on the ground protecting her eyes from the light. She opened them again after a time and stood to her feet. The A.I. was no more, but James remained, the figure of the man she loved, crouched where the crucifix had been, glowing with a misty energy.

"James?" she asked. "Is that you?"

"I finally understand, Thel," James replied in a whispery voice. "To become G.o.d, you have to kill G.o.d."

"What are you talking about James? What is happening?" James turned to face Thel and opened his eyes, which glowed white. Thel gasped and stepped back. "You're scaring me."

"I've become him now."

"I-I don't understand. What do you mean, James?"

"I am the A.I., Thel. I have access to everything-control over everything."

Thel took a moment to process what she was hearing. "Does that mean the Purists are safe?" she asked.

"It means so much more than just that," James said as his image began to levitate and glow with white energy.

"What's happening to you?"

"I can bring them back, Thel."

"Them? Who's them?"

"Everyone. Everyone in the world. The A.I. used Death's Counterfeit to upload all of their consciousnesses onto his mainframe. Your sister is still alive, Thel. Everyone is still alive."

"My sister? My sister?" Thel echoed excitedly. "But her body...?"

"I can re-create it perfectly. It's all saved. The A.I. created so many trillions of nans, and they can build a body-using the earth around them, just like a replicator."

Outside of the mainframe bunker, Old-timer deactivated the Zeus as he watched a dream come true, the old world forming right in front of his eyes. The nans formed buildings, trees, gra.s.s, and even people. Human beings were waking, as if from restful sleeps, standing to their feet as he watched. Finally, the Zeus crashed to the ground and lay there, still.

"My G.o.d."

In the Purist complex, the digging continued as the ma.s.ses remained together, huddled and praying that Old-timer and Thel could save them in time. The robots slowly neared, and Djanet and Rich took their places as protectors of the helpless.

"No more tricks left up our sleeves," Rich said to Djanet.

"No more tricks. It's been a pleasure, Richard."

The two Omegas stepped to each other and embraced, holding each other tight as the sound of the bats grew to an almost deafening roar.

"Let's give them h.e.l.l," Rich whispered.

Djanet nodded, and they turned to face fate. Boulders and rubble smashed away from the wall near the destroyed elevator shaft, and a bat emerged. Rich and Djanet blasted it with magnetic energy, and it tumbled to the ground. They waited for several moments, expecting robots to flood into the room, but they never came.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on?" Djanet asked.

Rich stepped forward and examined the entrance that the bat had created. Hundreds of meters above, the light of day glowed. No nans or bats could be seen. Rich turned to the thousands of people watching him and shrugged. "You're not gonna believe this, but the coast is clear."

Suddenly, Djanet and Rich's mind's eyes opened automatically, and a picture of James greeted them. "James!" Djanet shouted in surprise.

"Their leader?" General Wong asked in astonishment.

"Yes!" Alejandra replied, sensing a joy more powerful than any she'd ever felt.

"Rich, Djanet, I've deactivated and deleted the A.I. You and the Purists are safe, and I have control of the nans," James informed them calmly.

"We're safe," Rich whispered before shouting out to the thousands of silent onlookers, "The A.I. is dead! We're safe!"

A crowd of thousands erupted in a roar. The noise was unlike any they would ever experience again; nothing could match the release of being so close to a certain death and then finding reprieve. It was like the new birth of 10,000 souls. Alejandra shook as the joy flowed through her like a mountain river.

Old-timer blasted through the black doors of the mainframe bunker as though they were made of paper and marveled as he saw James, still glowing with electric light, Thel standing nearby. "It's a miracle!"

"It is," Thel replied, smiling.

Old-timer walked in a daze toward the spectacle before him. "Is it really him?" he asked.

"It's him...sort of."

"It's...it's like he's a G.o.d."

James opened his eyes and smiled at Old-timer. "G.o.d took seven days."

Outside, the trillions of nans continued to build. Cities were re-created according to existing records, forests were reconstructed down to the last detail, and the oceans were refilled with life.

"Old-timer," James began, "there's someone waiting for you in Texas."

Old-timer's mouth opened in surprise. "Daniella? She's alive? How?"

"The A.I. saved their consciousness," Thel informed him. "James is rebuilding their bodies and putting them back! Go to her!" Thel encouraged, beaming a smile at her friend.

Old-timer turned to leave before quickly turning back to the electronic James and saying, "Thank you, buddy."

"No thanks needed," James replied.

Old-timer smiled and then hooted with glee before streaking out of the bunker in a line of green light.

"Someone is waiting for you too," James said to Thel.

"My sister? Thank you, James. I'll go to her soon, but I want to stay here with you."

"Not your sister," James's voice said from behind her.