uncomfortable truths

The SUV's custom-enhanced engine roared as it tore through the city streets, weaving between autonomous delivery vehicles and the few remaining human-driven cars. Kai gripped the door handle, his knuckles white, pain still radiating through his mending ribs. Next to him, his father drove with the cold precision Kai had come to associate with the man who'd returned from Cairo. A ghost of the father he once knew.

Blood caked Kai's shirt, a reminder of how quickly his life had unraveled. Just hours ago, he'd been a data scrub with a comfortable apartment and Mia. Now Mia was gone, and he was fleeing with the man who'd molded him into a weapon.

"You're going to tell me what's happening," Kai said, breaking the tense silence. It wasn't a question.

His father's profile remained impassive, eyes fixed on the road. The scar that ran from his temple to his jawline gleamed white under the passing streetlights, a memento from some mission he'd never discussed.

"Not yet, at least not until we are safe" Max Parker replied, taking a sharp turn that sent Kai's shoulder against the door.

Kai winced but refused to show weakness. "That's bullshit and you know it. My boss just tried to kill me. He wasn't human. And you don't seem surprised by that fact." Memories flashed through Kai's mind. The sparks erupting from Benson's damaged eye socket, the inhuman strength, the way bullets barely slowed him down. "My girlfriend is dead, and I deserve answers."

His father's hands tightened on the wheel. For a moment, Kai was twelve years old again, watching his father transform from the gentle archivist who'd read him bedtime stories to a hardened commander of the X-23.

"They're called Sentinels," Max finally said. "Advanced androids designed by LUMON for infiltration and assassination. They've been hunting down anyone connected to the Jovan Sovereign for years."

Kai stared at his father in disbelief. "A children's book? Mom's obsession with some lost media ? That's what this is about?"

For the first time, Max turned to look at him, and Kai saw something in his eyes he'd rarely witnessed since Cairo: fear.

"It was never just a book, Kai."

The words hung between them as Max returned his attention to the road, swerving off the main highway onto a dirt path that wound into the dense forest surrounding the city's northern border.

"After you ran away with Mia—" Max began.

"Escaped," Kai corrected sharply. "After I escaped you and your child soldiers."

Max's jaw tightened. "After you left, I kept tabs on you. I knew LUMON would eventually trace the connection. Rook was helping us prepare an extraction, but he panicked when he found out they were closing in. He wasn't supposed to contact you directly."

The mention of Rook triggered a surge of memories. Of late nights in the orphanage, huddled around a table comparing notes on the respective parts of the Jovan book they possessed, whispering theories about why their parents had been taken from them.

"So my mother didn't die in an accident," Kai said, the realization settling like a stone in his stomach. He'd always suspected this. "And neither did Rook's parents."

Max's silence was confirmation enough.

Rage and grief welled up inside him, emotions he'd spent years suppressing now threatening to overflow. He thought of his mother's smile as she read from that battered old tome, the joy in her eyes when she discovered some new fragment of the lost book. He thought of Cairo, of the supposed explosion that took her from him.

"Was it worth it?" Kai asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "Was your obsession with this... this story worth Mom's life? Worth turning me into a killer? Worth Mia?"

The SUV slowed as they approached a nondescript cabin hidden among the trees. Security lights activated, scanning the vehicle before the camouflaged garage door slid open.

"It was never about the story, Kai," Max said as he pulled into the garage. "It's about what's hidden in it."

Before Kai could demand clarification, the door behind them sealed shut, plunging them into darkness broken only by the dim glow of the SUV's dashboard.

Max killed the engine and turned to face his son fully. In the low light, his face looked haggard, aged beyond his years.

"I know you hate me," he said, no emotion in his voice. "You have every right to. But right now, you need to listen. Whatever you think you know about the world, about history, about the war, about the rise of the mega-corps, it's all a ruse for something else."

Kai scoffed. "And I suppose the 'truth' is hidden in mom's fairy tales?"

"Yes." Max's response was so immediate, so certain, that it caught Kai off guard. "The Jovan Sovereign book isn't fiction. It's history. Future history, written by someone who's already seen it happen."

The absurdity of the statement might have made Kai laugh in any other circumstance. Instead, he found himself remembering fragments of the stories; the rise of the seven corporations, the AI rebellion, the exodus to Mars. Details that had seemed fantastical as a child now struck uncomfortably close to their reality.

Before Kai could respond, the interior door to the garage slid open, revealing a stern-faced woman with shock-white hair and a military-grade pulse rifle casually held across her chest.

"Took you long enough," she said, her eyes immediately assessing Kai. "This is him? He looks half-dead."

"He tangled with a Sentinel," Max explained, exiting the vehicle. "Caroline, meet my son, Kai. Kai, this is Caroline. She's an old friend from before the war."

Kai stepped out, the pain in his ribs making him wince visibly. Caroline's hard expression didn't soften, but her eyes narrowed with something that might have been concern.

"Get him inside," she ordered. "Ray's been itching for action, and Mason's about to fry another circuit board with his nervous pacing."

The interior of the cabin belied its rustic exterior. Beyond the entryway, Kai found himself in what looked like a military command center. Its walls lined with screens displaying security feeds, encrypted communications, and complex data arrays that reminded him of his days with X-23.

Three people awaited them inside. A muscular, heavily tattooed man with a shaved head leaned against the far wall, hostility radiating from him. Next to a bank of computers sat a thin young man with thick glasses, fingers dancing across multiple keyboards simultaneously. And near what appeared to be a medical station stood a woman, couldn't have been more than twenty-five, with dark hair pulled back in a practical braid.

"So this is the legendary Kai Parker," the skinhead said, pushing off from the wall with a sneer. "Expected someone more impressive, considering all the fuss."

"Ray," Max warned, his voice carrying the same commanding tone Kai remembered from training.

"What?" Ray spread his hands. "I'm just saying, if he couldn't even save his girlfriend, how's he supposed to—"

Kai moved before anyone could stop him, years of combat training taking over as he closed the distance to Ray. Pain exploded through his injured ribs, but adrenaline propelled him forward, his fist connecting with Ray's jaw with a satisfying crack.

Instead of stumbling back, Ray grinned through bloodied teeth. "There he is," he said, before launching a counter-attack that Kai barely blocked.

"Enough!" The young woman stepped between them, her hand on Kai's chest firm but gentle. "He's injured, Ray. Back off."

Ray spat blood onto the floor but stepped back. "Just checking his reflexes, Paulina. Someone's gotta make sure he's worth the trouble."

Kai's chest heaved with exertion and rage. "What trouble? Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?"

The room fell silent, all eyes turning to Max, who looked uncharacteristically uncertain.

"Dad," Kai pressed, the word feeling foreign in his mouth after years of calling him 'sir' or nothing at all. "You owe me this much."

Max sighed, gesturing toward the medical station. "Let Caroline patch you up first. Then we'll talk."

The next fifteen minutes passed in tense silence as Caroline used what Kai recognized as military-grade regenerative tech to accelerate the healing of his fractured ribs and shoulder. The equipment was far beyond civilian access yet another indicator of whatever operation his father was running.

"You military?" Kai asked Caroline as she worked, trying to piece together some understanding of the group.

She snorted. "Once. Back when countries still mattered more than corporations. Now I'm just old and angry, like everyone else in this room."

"Speak for yourself," the young woman—Paulina—said, handing Caroline a sterile bandage. "Some of us are just young and angry." She offered Kai a small smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Welcome to the resistance, I guess."

"Resistance against what?" Kai asked, his patience wearing thin. "I've been attacked by my boss, learned he's some kind of advanced android, and discovered my girlfriend is—" His voice caught. "Just tell me what's happening."

The tech specialist, Mason, looked up from his screens. "He really doesn't know anything, does he?" He pushed his glasses up his nose, expression caught between amusement and concern. "Man, we are so screwed."

"Mason," Max warned, but the floodgates had opened.

"Tell me what?" Kai demanded, standing despite Caroline's protests. Pain lanced through his partially healed ribs, but he ignored it, focusing on his father. "What don't I know?"

Ray laughed, a harsh sound devoid of humor. "Everything, apparently. Tell him, Max. Tell him what his mother died for."

Kai watched his father's face darken at the mention of his mother, the scar on his cheek whitening as his jaw clenched. For a moment, Kai glimpsed the dangerous man who had trained child soldiers to fight against the mega-corporations. The man who had replaced his father after Cairo.

"The Jovan Sovereign," Max began slowly, "is more than just a story. It's merely a part of an ancient tome we refer to as the primordial record, which has the whole history of humanity, written by someone in the future, a prophecy or a predictive model of some sorts, I'm not certain, that is disguised as fiction to hide it from AI censors."

"A predictive model?" Kai repeated, skepticism evident in his voice.

"The fragments we have accurately forecasted the Third World War," Caroline interjected, her tone matter-of-fact. "And the rise of corporate power. And the development of sentient AI."

Mason nodded vigorously. "And not just in broad strokes. Specific companies, specific technologies—it's like whoever wrote it had already lived through the next hundred years of human history."

Kai's mind raced, trying to remember the details of the stories his mother had read to him night after night. The tales he had memorized and that kept him company in countless foster homes and during sleepless nights in the X- 23 barracks.

"That's impossible," he said, fragments of the stories whizzing through his mind. A fully colonized solar system led by the sovereign, a messianic figure who had led the world out of its dark ages, defeating huge machines in outer space. The imperium knights, beings who possessed otherworldly powers through their warforms-highly advanced technological exoskeletons that were almost magical, and the development of synthetic humans indistinguishable from the real thing. It all seemed like fairy tales, stories too far fetched to be tied to their reality.

"What makes it valuable," Max continued, "is what it predicts next. We've been searching for fragments of this book for years, someone split them up to protect them. We were able to recover some pages, chronicling the last 100 years in minute detail, but the catch is that it was written ages ago Kai, way before the war. The book your mother has, was a rendition of the final pages we have not been able to recover. Hidden in plain sight, whoever wrote it disguised them as stories, even I did not realize this until it was too late. It has details of an age of humanity that we will inevitably be living in, in the distant future. But more importantly, it contains the key to preventing what comes after."

"Which is?" Kai prompted.

"The end," Paulina said simply. "Not just of human civilization—of everything. You know this of course, you're the only one here who has read the whole thing."

Kai looked around the room, waiting for someone to break the tension with laughter, to admit this was all some elaborate ruse. No one did.

"You expect me to believe that mom's bedtime stories predict the apocalypse?" He shook his head. "This is insane."

"Where's the book now?" Ray demanded, stepping closer to Kai. "If you're the chosen one with the magic memory, where's the source material?"

The realization that he no longer possessed the tome, the last piece he had left of his mom, hit him like a ton of bricks.

"It's gone," he admitted, watching the color drain from every face in the room. "It was destroyed years ago."

"We're fucked," Ray declared, slamming his fist into the wall. "All this for nothing."

Mason slumped in his chair. "Without the original text, we can't verify the predictions or locate the other pages."

Caroline's stoic expression cracked slightly. "Max, you said he had it. You promised us—"

"He doesn't need it," Max interrupted, stepping toward Kai with an intensity that made the others fall silent. "Kai, do you remember the Chronos Divergence? Page 394 of your mother's book, the paragraph about the reaper's return?"

The question triggered something in Kai's mind, a cascade of memories, the sensation of worn pages beneath his fingertips, his mother's voice reading words that had seemed like fantasy but now carried the weight of prophecy.

"'And upon the breaking of the third world, the Chronos Divergence will manifest,'" Kai recited automatically, his voice distant even to his own ears. "'When the reaper rises from the darkness of the abyss, bearing the mark of the trickster god , he shall unleash the final scourge that devours all life.'"

The room fell into stunned silence.

"Word for word," Max said softly, something like pride mixing with the tension in his voice. "Just like your mother could."

Mason had turned pale. "That's... that's not in any of the fragments we've recovered. How did he—"

"Eidetic memory," Max explained. "He remembers everything he's ever read, exactly as it was written. Including the complete text of the Jovan Sovereign."

Ray's hostile demeanor shifted subtly, reassessing Kai with newfound interest. "So we don't need the book. We have him."

The implications of his father's words began to sink in, and with them came a wave of anger that eclipsed even the pain of Mia's loss.

"That's why you came for me at the orphanage when I was eleven," Kai said, the pieces falling into place. "Not because you missed your son. Because you needed a living backup of mom's precious book."

Max didn't deny it, and his silence was damning.

"You turned me into a soldier because you needed to protect your investment," Kai continued, years of resentment boiling to the surface. "You trained me to kill for a cause I didn't even understand, all so I could recite your damn prophecies when needed."

"It wasn't like that," Max argued, but the defense sounded hollow even to Kai's ears.

"Then what was it like?" Kai challenged. "Because from where I'm standing, you used me just like you used mom. And now she's dead, and Mia's dead, and I'm supposed to, what? Help you save the world based on a fairy tale?"

Before Max could respond, a screeching sound tore through the air and multiple alarms came to life drowning them in noise amidst flickering red lights from the monitors that now showed multiple SUVs approaching the cabin from all directions.

"We've been compromised," Paulina announced calmly, as if she was announcing the weather. She whirled towards him, "Are you sure you wore the EMP correctly?"

" Yes," he said, glaring back at Ray who was staring daggers at him. "Of course I'm not a mole, I never wanted to be here in the first place."

Caroline already had her rifle raised, calibrating the sights with practiced efficiency. "Sentinels. At least six units."

Ray pulled two heavy handguns from concealed holsters, checking their charges with grim satisfaction. "Told you we couldn't trust the freak."

Kai stared at Ray who slowly raised his gun, then at Paulina, who met his gaze without flinching a pistol in her hands. It was about to get ugly. Quickly, he began considering his options, he had no hope of taking on two armed assailants at point blank range.

"Enough!" Max cut in between them, Caroline in tow." We don't have time for this, and my son is not the mole, if you have a problem with him, then you have to go through me." He stared down Ray, who lowered his pistol. 

"Guys, they are getting closer," Mason said from his corner, hunched a data pad. "Let's put our trust issues aside for now, please. I am not eager to face those bloodthirsty sentinels this soon".

Max was already moving, pulling weapons from hidden compartments throughout the room. "We have four minutes before they breach the perimeter. Mason, initiate Protocol Helios. Paulina, stay close to him until he's done then evacuate. Ray, take the south exit with Caroline. Try to hold them off for 4 minutes tops. I'll get Kai to the secondary location."

"I'm not going anywhere," Kai declared, standing his ground even as alarms continued blaring throughout the facility. "Not until you tell me the truth. All of it."

His father paused, a weight seeming to settle on his shoulders as he looked at Kai, really looked at him. For what felt like the first time since Cairo.

"The primordial record was sent for a reason Kai," Max said, his voice tight. "It's instructions. A roadmap for how to prevent the catastrophe that's coming. And you, Kai, you're the only person alive who knows those instructions in their entirety."

Before Kai could process this revelation, the security screens flashed red as the first perimeter alarm triggered.

"They're here," Caroline announced grimly, moving into position at a reinforced window. "And they're not alone."

On the screen, Kai could see the familiar form of his former boss, or another Sentinel of the same model, leading the assault. Behind the androids came something else, moving with unnatural fluidity, more shadow than substance.

"What is that?" Kai asked, a primal fear gripping him as he watched the shadowy forms advance.

Before Max could respond, a sharp crack echoed through the room. Kai turned just in time to see Paulina lower a pistol, Mason's body slumping forward, a neat hole drilled through the back of his head.