Toys

Chapter 104

I had no idea what to expect next-none of us did. Not in the next few minutes or the next few days, if truth be told. Maybe the human race would end; maybe the entire planet would be finished. Hard to predict.

The minutes crept by, an eternity of waiting in a dense, thickly treed forest, which felt primeval, except for the ghostly army of soldiers who rustled around with their tense preparations for war.

Then I heard an unexpected sound coming from the command post. It started as a murmur of voices, but quickly rose to excited shouts.

There seemed to be both outrage and triumph, but there were so many languages, it was hard to tell what had just happened.

There was no mistaking Lucy’s voice though: “Hays, this is it! Come in! Hays! Please come and see the insides of your wife’s bloody brain.”

As I ran back inside, I was startled by Lizbeth’s violet hair. It was streaming away from her head like it would if she were in a windstorm.

Then I realized that the top of her skull was actually separated from the rest of her head. I knew I would take that image to my grave.

“She’s fine,” Lucy said. “I told you-I’m a very good surgeon. Look through-there.”

My gaze swung to the hologram imager, where everyone else was staring. On the screen was the most horrific thing I’d ever seen in my life, and that included the film of 7–4 Day I’d watched at my parents’ house.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Jessica and Jacob dolls were wandering through a squalid human settlement. And the dolls were exploding- a staccato boom boom boom, like from an artillery barrage that wouldn’t end. Each doll was a walking, talking bomb.

Every violent flash released a fireball through the streets, along with billowing clouds of what had to be poison gas. The screaming humans, some of them small children, slapped desperately at the flames that crawled on their skin until they collapsed from the toxic vapor that seared their lungs.

It must have actually happened-an experiment maybe, a test run held in some isolated town. Obviously, Lizbeth had witnessed it personally since the images came from her memory.

In true Elite fashion, it was incredibly simple, brilliantly evil. And there were other terrifying images: simulators that appeared to give their users fatal strokes; phones that killed when they came in contact with human skulls; a vibrator, which I don’t even want to describe; video games that overstimulated players to the point of death.

The assembled human leaders pushed past me, rushing to communicate the frightening information back to their nations. They were still shouting in different languages, but this time, I knew what they were saying: Destroy the toys! Stop the Elites.

Meanwhile, the massive human army was finally on the move. I could actually see tens of thousands of soldiers readying their weapons and piling into armored transports, prepared to launch an attack against the better-equipped Elite forces in the city.

This was Armageddon-and at least I was on the side of good.

I walked up to Lucy, who was-well-Lucy to the end. “The Elites,” she said, “they don’t have a chance in hell.”