The Prophet: Resurrection: A Sci-Fi Thriller

by David Beers

  The gray light was not hers, though, and if it had ever been, then she’d only borrowed it. No matter how much she struggled to take hold of the light, it would not obey. Powerful she may have been, Nicki was brought low in a single moment.

  And then the pain poured on. She felt her bones snapping like brittle glass. Not only major ones like her femur, but everything down to the tiny structures inside her hands. The large static cord wrapped around her like an octopus’s tentacle, squeezing tight and crushing her. She felt sharp objects—things that should not be there—slicing into vital organs.

  Blood poured from her mouth, but it could only be seen for a few seconds, because the smaller cords attacked next. None wrapped around her—no, they slapped at her, long strings hanging from the sky.

  Smack.

  Smack.

  Smacksmacksmack.

  They came so rapidly, with such little time between each lash, it felt as if there was no break between them. No time separating one from the other.

  Her skin practically fell from her body; her internal organs bled.

  And yet, Nicki lived. Impossibly—but what about any of this had ever been possible?

  None of it. Not a single bit. And so the pain consuming her was allowed to reign and her body not allowed to die.

  Tears fell from her eyes, just as bloody as the strips of flesh hanging from her cheeks.

  No words.

  Barely any thoughts.

  And pain. Glorious, unforgiving, unimaginable pain.

  The dark man came to her whispering words that she couldn’t focus on, nor possibly answer. Words that whisked by her ear, meaning nothing. This pain was now God and it said all else must bow.

  When the static orb smashed into her, rushing across her like an ocean wave, Nicki didn’t see it coming—and though she couldn’t think enough to hope—had she been able to, it would have been for death.

  Death did not come, though.

  Nicki saw nothing but static, her body a broken and beaten thing, but death was not allowed. Not yet.

  The gray consumed her completely, and the pain …

  … stopped.

  Nicki blinked, not understanding. The cord holding her was gone, and she collapsed to her knees. She opened her mouth to scream, but only gray static poured from her mouth—no noise, no sound at all. Just static like bees, flowing freely and spilling into the space …

  Nicki looked around her.

  This wasn’t space.

  This wasn’t gray static, and as Nicki looked down, she saw nothing pouring from her mouth.

  She stared at her hands—what had been tattered, broken things were now the pale, untouched white of her entire life.

  She wasn’t in a static cloud of death, nor draped with wretched, bleeding skin, but instead in her house, her home, wearing her restaurant uniform.

  “Hey, Nicki.”

  She was on her knees in the kitchen, and her head jerked up at the sound.

  “Mom?”

  Her mother was leaning against the kitchen counter, looking as perfect as Nicki could ever remember. She wore …

  A yellow dress.

  Impossible.

  Just like everything else, because Nicki remembered that yellow dress.

  It had always been her favorite.

  “Kind of.” Nicki’s head jerked to the voice on her right. Her father stood at the kitchen doorway. “But not really. I know that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  Nicki was lost, still on the floor and unable to find a single word.

  “Come on, get up, honey,” her mother said, stepping across the room, her yellow dress moving with her hips. She reached down and took both of Nicki’s hands in her own, and then slowly—delicately—lifted her. “Let’s sit down.”

  Nicki was led to the kitchen table, then placed in a chair.

  She watched her father walk across the kitchen and to the cupboard where he first grabbed a bowl, and then a box of cereal. She read the name off the box—Priest Pops (they’d always been his favorite)—and then watched as he went to the refrigerator to get milk.

  Nicki’s eyes went to her arms, appendages that had been bloody hunks of meat only moments before.

  “We know,” her father said. “It’s a lot. But, we wanted to talk with you for a moment.”

  Her mother pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down in it. “Some would call this deus ex machina, but that’s only because they haven’t been paying attention.”

  “God from the machine,” her dad said as he poured the milk into the bowl. He turned around and leaned against the counter, bowl in one hand, spoon in the other. “Here to resolve an impossible situation, like the one Earth is currently facing.”

  Nicki’s head whipped around, expecting to see the Prophet and the river.

  “It’s okay, honey.” Her mother reached forward, placing a hand on top of Nicki’s. “You don’t have to worry about that right now.”

  Her dad dipped the spoon into the bowl, pulled out a bite and put it in his mouth.

  “I suppose we are and we aren’t your parents. We’re just as much you too, and those blessed people down there acting foolish. We could take this down some existential pathways, but that’s not why we came.”

  Her mother shook her head, agreeing with her husband.

  He took another bite, and then continued. “The thing he serves, it’s … outside of our will, I guess. That’s what Laurel was trying to tell you, in her own way.”

  “Your will?” Nicki asked, finally a question coming to her lips.

  “Yes. That’s probably the simplest terms we can put it in.”

  “You’re God?”

  “We really can’t say one way or another on that,” her father answered. “People might consider us God, in the same way very young children might consider their parents God. But, perhaps there is more out there. Who knows?”

  He took a bite of the cereal as if the question was perhaps the least important thing he’d ever considered.

  “Honey,” her mother said. “We wanted to talk with you for a minute.”

  Her father nodded. “Yup. Normally we wouldn’t come here like this, but we thought we owed you something.”

  “Our will is important, but it’s not the only thing that matters. We can set things in motion, and we can try to keep them rolling, but eventually, other wills matter too.”

  “That creature coming here now, for one. We wanted nothing to do with it, but there it is, trying to consume the whole damned universe.” Her father shook his head.

  Her mother turned around and looked at him, displeasure at his language across her face. After a second, she came back to Nicki. “Only those without a good grasp of the English language use such base words … The point that I’m trying to make is, other wills come into play as well. If ours is so strong, it’s only because we see further out. Still, all of this could have been stopped if you hadn’t kept going, or made different choices. Like killing the man who came to your house, for one. And that’s why we wanted to speak with you.”

  “You came through a lot to get here, and you just kept coming, darling.”

  Her father was staring at her now, the nonchalance completely gone. Nicki saw … love, and maybe a sense of reverence as well.

  “Our will would have been meaningless if you didn’t keep going, and we actually thought you might not make it,” her mother said. “There are limits to what we can do—”

  “And the Laurel thing was straining them,” her father interrupted.

  “But we showed you her, because we wanted you to see there is a plan. We wanted you to trust in it. It was the only way we could stop that thing out there.”

  “And this plan,” her father said, “goes back a long, long time. The sight wasn’t an invention of man, no more than the nuclear bomb was. We had to hope you would make it here, though, to this very point, or else everything else…”

  He looked into his bowl and stirred the cereal.

&
nbsp; “Well, it all would have been lost.”

  “But you did it, honey,” her mother said. “You made it.”

  “Why do I matter in this?” Nicki asked.

  “Believe it or not, Nicki,” her father said, “on our side, you’re the only thing that matters. Literally, no one else was important. We did our best to keep pushing things our way—like a strong wind blowing everything in one direction—but that was all we could do.”

  “You’re not answering the question,” her mother spoke up, looking at Nicki with the brown eyes that she had thought she’d never see again. “Honey, you matter, because we can’t save the human species. You may think of God or Gods as everything. All powerful. But we’re not. At least we’re not. You’re about to save mankind, Nicki. Not us. We created a situation for that to be possible, but you’re not a clock that we wound up. You’re just a racer that we trained. You still had to get out there and run that race.”

  Nicki looked away from her mother and father. She stared across the kitchen to the far window. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” her father said.

  “What about my dad?” She shook her head. “Not you, but my real dad.”

  “He’s going to live,” her mother said. “Everyone is going to live because you came this far.”

  Nicki nodded, tears again in her eyes, though unsure why exactly she was crying. Whether because of her impending death or because she’d never see her father again.

  Another question came to her.

  “Why us? Why are we in your will, but It’s not?”

  “That question, it isn’t for you to ask, nor for us to answer. Not right now.”

  Nicki’s face whipped to them. “I don’t deserve an answer?”

  “You may deserve it, Nicki,” her mother said softly, “but that’s got nothing to do with it. This isn’t the time.”

  Nicki stared for a second longer, and then looked away again, letting the question go. “Do I have to? … Do I have to still do this?”

  Her father placed the bowl on the counter, and then walked forward. He pulled the chair from the other side of the table and put it next to his wife, right in front of Nicki.

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “When you go back out there, you’re going back into pain. We can’t dull that, nor take it away. You don’t have to go back, though. You can pass from existence right now, and all that pain will remain in the past.”

  “But if I don’t go back out there, then the Black wins? Whatever that means?”

  Both parents nodded.

  “The choice is yours, Nicki. We came here because you deserved it. Because you deserved to know what this meant, but our will, it isn’t absolute. Humanity has to want it, too. And now, humanity rests on you, Nicki. You’re its sole representative.”

  Nicki was silent for a long, long time. The two in front of her looked on, but neither said anything. If things were happening outside of this time and place, Nicki didn’t know.

  “Will you tell my dad I love him? Will you make sure he knows that?”

  “He does, Nicki,” her mother said, “but we’ll send a message.”

  “And my mom?” Nicki said, he voice cracking and tears flooding her eyes. “Is there any way you can let her know? There has to be, right? If that Laurel woman is still alive, then maybe my mom is, too?”

  “Yes, honey. She knows, but we’ll remind her.”

  Nicki nodded, the tears overflowing. She nodded a few times, coming to grips with what it all meant. This whole journey, for her to end up here with a single decision.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  She looked at the two creatures resembling her parents. “I’m ready.”

  Pain had gripped Nicki Sesam, and in much the same way, terror gripped Raylyn Brinson.

  The Prophet.

  Rhett Scoble.

  Rebecca, now dying next to Raylyn, spit flying from her mouth.

  All of it brought Raylyn to a nearly immobile stupor. Paralyzed.

  She watched Hollowborne descend into the water, a huge cloud of static hanging in the air, having clearly killed Nicki Sesam.

  It’s all going to end, she thought. Right now. Right in front of you. The world is going to end.

  Wind whipped around her, sending her hair across her face.

  “I love you.” The words barely found Raylyn’s ears, but they did, somehow breaking through the terror possessing her mind.

  She looked down and saw the woman on the ground—Rebecca. Did she say them?

  “I love you.”

  Her face was purple, a huge vein sticking out across her forehead. One eye was a bloody, swollen mess, her cheek sliced wide open.

  “I love you,” she said again, the words barely passing through her lips, and growing weaker each time. Scoble kept bearing down, strangling the life out of her.

  Raylyn stared down, not moving, watching death yet again.

  “I—” the woman tried to say, but Scoble fell off before she could finish, and Rebecca was thrown into a coughing fit. Spit and ragged air rushing from her mouth.

  Scoble rolled onto his back and screamed, his right hand banging the pipe down over and over on the ground. He yelled into the air, his face twisted in a grimace while Rebecca rolled onto her side, coughing over and over as she curled into a ball.

  You’re about to die, Raylyn, the stubborn part of her said. Do you want to do it watching these people?

  No, she thought, realizing that it truly didn’t matter if either of them died. Not to her. She didn’t know them, and weeks ago, she’d been willing to kill them both.

  They didn’t matter.

  She looked across the dirt covered river bank to the transport.

  If you’re going to die, do it with him. Not for him. Not for his Prophet. But with him.

  Raylyn passed by the two on the ground, not sparing them a glance. The wind rushed around her and the water flowing to her side gurgled its angry curses at her, but she went without caring about the world at all.

  She didn’t even see the Prophet disappearing beneath the water.

  It only took a minute to reach the transport, and Manor stepped outside.

  “It’s too late,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. Exasperated, he half laughed. “You can’t take the Blood now.”

  “I’m not here for the Blood, you idiot. I’m here because if I’m going to die, I want to do it next to you.”

  The two stared at each other for a second, Raylyn hoping—almost praying to gods she didn’t believe in—that he would finally understand. That she loved him. There were an infinite number of other words and phrases she could say, but in the end, that’s all she wanted Manor Reinheld to know. That she loved him.

  He opened his arms, tears still in his eyes, and Raylyn went to him.

  Her soul was her own, but she would be able to share it with someone, if only for a few moments.

  In their moment of bliss, neither of them saw the black orb spark into existence beneath the river.

  Nicki went back into the world, into a body that should not be alive, but somehow was. She left the gods or God or whatever words humans used to describe things they couldn’t understand. She left peace and entered madness.

  It was brief, and that’s all it could have been, for to stay in such pain and insanity for longer than a single moment would have killed her.

  The Old World based their entire existence on a story of a god born as a man, who gave up his life so that humanity could have eternal life.

  Perhaps it was true.

  Perhaps it was false.

  But thousands of years later, a human did something similar. She gave up her own life, and not even for humanity to live forever, but simply to live a little longer.

  The well inside Nicki Sesam exploded.

  Those on the riverbank watched first, and then the rest of the world understood shortly thereafter.

  The black orb in the water was growing, unable to be ignored any lon
ger. The Prophet had opened the doorway, and his God was coming through.

  Someone from the bank finally understood, shouting, “IT’S PULLING US!”

  And the black orb, growing, began to eat.

  One half of the river was flowing backwards, slowly but perceptibly. Dirt on the edge of the bank started rising into the air and then zipping forward. The blackness calling the tiny particles to it.

  No one looked at the large static mass above, feeling the slight but growing tug on their own bodies—pulling them to the boiling water, even as it was disappearing.

  The mass rippled, though. It started in the middle, and then flowed out, the static growing brighter as the ripple moved to the edge.

  Another ripple, this one quicker.

  A shoe flew off someone’s foot and rushed through the air, creating a small splash as it sank beneath the water.

  Another ripple, the cloud too bright to even look at.

  Those on the ground tried to grab onto something, instinct taking over as the force grew greater.

  One last ripple, flowing from the cloud’s center to its very edge.

  There was no great expansion, no ripping forth of gray static. Instead, the sky simply started to fall. A single strand of gray dripped down like syrup, finally separating from the overall body of static. It hit the river gently, dissipating and immediate cooling the water around it.

  Another strand dripped, again over the river, and where it touched the water, the river grew calm.

  More poured down, falling over the river, but spreading outward too—across the banks and then further into the land.

  The sky rained gray static, and finally, those near the river looked up and saw it. None tried to run, so amazed at what they watched that they barely recognized that the pull on their bodies was fading.

  Two people lay next to each other, staring up at the sky, neither truly understanding. Two others hugged each other, and a gray strand hit one of them, running down their arm before disappearing—sinking into them.

  None felt pain as the gray rain fell on them all, and they remained watching. For hours. Until the sky gave up all of its static, and only black night remained above.