by David Beers
The morning death broke out across the world, Tidus said goodbye to his father and walked out of his apartment. His dad made no comment on what would happen, and Tidus later thought he hadn’t known any more than his son. The two had been blind up until the moment it came—the moment the future finally arrived.
Tidus waited for his capsule to arrive, then stepped inside it and was lifted into the air. He saw other capsules right beside him, just like every other morning. No one waved. No one even looked at each other, really. They all stared at their capsule’s screens, watching whatever the Ministry had programmed for each individual person. Tidus watched too, of course. He had to. Seminary demanded it. It was a grueling process, and those that were deemed unworthy … Well, it wasn’t a life Tidus was willing to entertain.
The day continued on as usual until just after the sun’s highest point. That’s when Tidus first thought something might be different, even if he wasn’t sure exactly what.
It was his blood. He knew that much, though it wasn’t itching as it had in the past. This didn’t feel like the Prophet was working. That had always been a slight annoyance, if somewhat pleasant. Like a light tickle, something that you sort of wished would stop, but also secretly hoped it might continue on forever. This … this was different.
Tidus stepped outside of his Seminary classroom and into the hallway. The open air above him was still, Tidus looked at the floor and saw only white clouds beneath him—though they were only background to his mind’s thoughts. After a few seconds, he closed his eyes and his father’s voice came to him.
You’ll know when it happens. I promise you that. Rhett told me the same.
How many times had his dad said such things? Countless over the years.
And what do I feel now? Tidus wondered.
The answer that returned was simple, yet perhaps the most profound thing the young man had ever thought in his life.
Power.
It filled him like water in a cup, and as would eventually happen if that water continued flowing, he thought the power might overflow its vessel. His palms were sweating and his fingers twitching slightly. He opened his eyes and saw his left knee bouncing up and down.
Tidus had never touched drugs, had only heard of them in the most roundabout ways, so he couldn’t compare what he felt to imbibing substances. His body was growing warmer, and he began to understand the moment was upon him. The one he and his father had waited for their entire lives. He needed no other explanation, nor would he have accepted one. Tidus couldn’t have walked back into his classroom and told his professor why he felt such truth, no more than a man could describe the color blue. He simply knew it.
Tidus did only one thing before beginning a war that quickly spread across the globe.
He called his father. Despite almost perfect knowledge that the day had arrived, Tidus was still a young man and needed reassurance.
He walked outside and stepped into his capsule, only blue sky above him.
As soon as the capsule closed, Tidus saw his father looking back at him, and knew immediately he’d been right. His father had been waiting, wanting to give permission.
“This is it,” Rorse said, a large smile across his face. “Today is the day.”
“What do I do?” Tidus asked.
Rorse shook his head, not hiding his smile at all. “No, no. You know what to do. Nothing changes. We’ve gone over this more than enough, and you’re going to perform flawlessly, okay?”
Tidus nodded, his hands still jittery and the warmth in his body not subsiding an inch. He allowed himself a smile though, the warmth in his chest spreading to his mouth. Because his dad was right. They knew what to do. Rhett Scoble had told them, years and years ago.
“I love you,” Tidus said.
“I love you too, son. Be bold but be safe. I expect to see you tonight.”
Tidus stepped out of his capsule and back into the school. He walked to his classroom and ignored the professor’s disapproving look. He sat down in his chair and let the power continue building. He heard no words, only saw the people in class with him.
His father had been waiting 20 years for this moment. And how long for Tidus? Since he was 10?
And all of it, every single bit, had been right. The hiding. The secret talks. The knowing that if anyone else ever found this out, the two of them would surely die. It had all been completely right, and the moment was here, the one that would prove it.
All the people around him, Tidus had put up with them his whole life. He’d listened to their sermons and their doctrine and on and on and on. He’d hid who he was, what he believed, because the people in this very class would have killed him if they knew. Killed him. For believing differently than they.
Killed his father, too. Their society was predicated on One belief. One Path. Anything else was to be discarded as false, a lie. That meant Tidus had been living a lie his whole life, and now, the day of reckoning had come. Real joy resided in that for Tidus, because these people who had kept him and those he loved from living life as they wanted … they all would now pay.
Now and forever.
Tidus grinned wide, and somewhat maniacally.
“Is something funny?” the professor asked.
The smile touched Tidus’s eyes—the true sign of happiness.
He stood from his chair and walked to the front of the classroom. The professor didn’t move or say a word, obviously confident in his ability to rule the class. Tidus didn’t stop, though. He walked right up to the man and shoved his thumbs deep into the professor’s eyes.
They popped like cherries, sending blood onto his cheeks and streaming down Tidus’s thumbs.
He was still smiling as the body dropped to the floor.
The First Priest immediately left the black box. He listened to the nanotech message as he stepped from the lightless coffin.
Attacks across provinces.
What kind? he responded.
Person on person. Violence is extreme.
Bring the First Council to chambers. Have holographic replays visible.
The First Priest walked across the campus, his feet moving swiftly enough that if anyone saw him, they would immediately know something was wrong. It didn’t matter. If they didn’t already know how wrong things were, they would shortly. The First Priest didn’t think there was any way to hide this. They had moved past that.
He entered the Council’s chamber, another Priest already there.
“Are the others coming?” he asked, not bothering to step up to his chair but standing down in the chamber where Raylyn Brinson had sat.
“They should be, yes.”
The walls lit up all around them, the Corinth statues the only objects blocking the view.
“Holographs, damn it!” the First shouted.
Three holographic images floated down from the ceiling, a voice speaking as they did. “If your Holiness wishes to understand the magnitude of what’s happening, it is necessary to see both active images as well as entire cities.”
The First shook his head, hating the impudence, but what could he do about it? Get mad at a computer?
He backed up slowly, taking in the images before him and moving up to his usual chair. He could see everything better from up here, though as his mind made sense of the images, he wondered if he actually wanted that. To see everything.
The High Priest had wanted to see nothing, only to speak to his Disciple. The First began thinking the High might have the right idea.
The three other Priests entered the room at the same time, all of them immediately freezing when they looked at the chamber below.
“No,” the woman said.
The others were quiet.
They all knew about the compound’s disaster, but this … this was worse.
“Explain the walls,” the First Priest said.
The images were changing quickly, but each ten feet showed a different video. All of them violent. Deadly. People were bleeding out on platforms,
having been desperately running outside of buildings in hopes of finding a transport. Now they stared up at the SkyLight, blood oozing from their mouths.
Other screens showed people actually being thrown out of transports. Fifty or more people simply falling silently through the sky. Chills ran up and down the First Priest’s body as he watched. The people fell from his view, but not from his mind, because he knew where they were heading. To the molten rock below, where they might bounce off a bridge or two before being liquefied.
“The walls are showing you different areas across the Ministry. We are calculating a violent attack at a rate of one every four seconds right now. Ten minutes ago, it was one every minute. Current predictions believe that violence will soon reach a rate of two attacks per second in the next 20 minutes.”
“The Holographs?” a Priest asked.
“Those are the three largest cities,” the voice said. The holographs grew larger, taking up most of the space in front of the Priests. The walls behind dimmed.
The First Priest looked across the three holographs and felt his temperature dropping. A cold sweat broke out across his brow, and all of the prayers he’d given to Corinth over the course of his life were forgotten.
The three cities were burning. Fire streaked up the buildings, reaching even the SkyLight at the Earth’s crust—blackening and breaking it, so that darkness fell down on the inhabitants below. He saw figures falling (being thrown, his mind corrected him) from buildings, so many that he couldn’t possibly count them all. Transports crashed into the same buildings, and into each other. The First Priest watched a large one, with perhaps 500 passengers on it, slam directly into the SkyLight. The holographs’ green lights showing the miniaturized transport crumbling as the back side continued its upward trajectory. The wrecked vehicle hung there for a second, and then gravity took hold. It fell back into the sky and then down to meet all those already dead.
“How many cities is this happening to?” his woman counterpart asked.
“Calculations show over 50%.”
“And why not the others?”
“Calculations do not show,” the voice said.
“YOU KNOW WHY!” the First Priest screamed, whipping around on the woman. “BECAUSE THE WEAPON HASN’T FUCKING SPREAD THERE YET!” He stared, heat finally pushing back against the cold in his chest. Angry heat, though he didn’t know who to direct it at. The other four Priests looked back at him, though none said a word. The First looked down at his feet. “The cities not under siege, what are their populations?”
“Each city not under siege is less than 10,000.”
“So population wise, what percentage is actually being attacked?”
“Ninety.”
The First tried to concentrate on his breathing, wanting to remove all extraneous thoughts from his mind. The people falling from buildings. Those staring up at a black SkyLight, red blood pumping from their mouths while their hands held red holes in their stomachs. He needed to think, to get some understanding of what was happening.
“We never believed,” someone said.
The First Priest didn’t look up. He didn’t want to hear the words, but he couldn’t push them away. Because they were true. The First Priest had lived his entire life without worrying about the Black; all of them had, and now that it was here, they were completely unprepared.
“We always thought we had it under control, that we would win if it came again. We’re not going to though, are we? This is the end.”
The Disciple sat in another motel room, the television on in front of him. The girl was bound, though unconscious on the bed. He didn’t need to tie up the man, and so made no effort to. The Disciple wasn’t concerned about him; only the girl mattered. Twelve hours had passed since the Disciple took them both, and the girl still hadn’t awakened.
She was alive, though.
The Disciple remembered his instructions well.
The High Priest wants to study her brain.
Her brain could still be studied as long as she was breathing. The High Priest wanted to study it while still connected.
The Disciple was still in the Old World, and actually preferred it to the True Faith, this television to the holographs he usually looked at. It was simpler here, and he appreciated such simplicity. It didn’t bother the Disciple to think this; he felt none of the usual compunction that others did when thinking something else better than their own Ministry. His faith was absolute, so appreciating something else meant no ill will toward his allegiances. If asked, he would have said the same to the High Priest.
The television—what the Old World called the box in front of him—showed the Disciple that he’d been right. He’d seen the gray light, and he knew the Black’s history better than anyone on Earth. Perhaps better than the High Priest himself. The gray static trumpeted the coming apocalypse, and the television revealed exactly that.
The Disciple had just finished seeing a cameraman shot in the face. The blood had splattered the camera lens, and then he watched as the world shifted, the camera falling to the ground and going black.
He stared at the screen, waiting for something else to show up. Rogan understood there would always be more destruction on this small box. Even if it paused for only a moment, more would show up.
The Disciple was biding his time, not wanting to venture out into the world with such mayhem happening. His mission was simple, but this violence complicated things. He had to safely transfer his prisoner back to the First Priest, and getting a transport now would be harder. The Black was returning, and Its death spreading. If this girl was the weapon, as he thought she was, then the Black’s followers would be searching for her.
The Disciple waited for instructions from the First Priest. Until they came, he would watch the box and ensure nothing happened to the two people he held captive.
The Disciple didn’t worry about the girl waking up, but that was only because of his genetics. Any rational creature, especially one with his knowledge, would have killed her or immediately left. Waiting around for the woman to wake was surely a death sentence, but the Disciple didn’t concern himself with such things. If she awoke, he would do his best to complete his mission, but other than that he couldn’t do much else.
“What are you?” The man asked from his place on the bed.
The Disciple knew his name: Rhett Scoble. The man’s nanotech told Rogan everything he needed to know, and what it didn’t say, the weapon on the bed filled in. There were black spots in Scoble’s nanotech, things the Disciple couldn’t read, but they made sense once associated with the Black. The Damned all tried to hide their past, but Rogan didn’t need to know anything else now. Rhett Scoble would go before the First Council.
“Can you hear me?” Scoble asked. “What are you? You’re not human. Not like any human I’ve ever seen.”
The Disciple didn’t glance over, but watched as the television turned back on.
“You’re from the True Faith? I can sense your nanotech, but it’s different. It’s not like mine or anyone else’s.”
The Disciple did turn his head slightly at that, because no one should be able to sense anything about him. His nanotech was unnoticeable to the untrained, passing a 32 panel test to ensure he appeared normal.
“How do you know?” the Disciple whispered.
The man smiled, then quickly grimaced. His shoulder was bandaged and the blood staunched, but the Disciple had done nothing to help with the pain. The bullet was still lodged inside.
“My faith in Corinth tells me,” Scoble said.
The Disciple looked back at the television.
“What do you want with her? To kill her?”
Silence.
“You should. That’s what I was here for. You could kill her and then me if you want. I’m fine with that, as long as she dies.”
The Disciple could have closed the man’s mouth, but decided not to. Instead, he ignored him, understanding that anything he might say would be only lies. Kill her. Save
her. Kill him. Raise him to Corinth. It was all the same to the Disciple. His mission wouldn’t change.
Disciple, the First Priest’s nanotech was connecting with Rogan’s.
The Disciple felt no emotion at it, only a sense of rightness, as if he was made for these types of connections.
Yes, your Holy. I’m here.
You see what is happening? the First Priest asked.
Yes. I do.
The High Priest is asking to speak directly with you.
“You’re talking to someone, aren’t you?” the man on the floor said.
The Disciple realized his eyes had narrowed a bit at the First Priest’s last statement. He relaxed his face.
Certainly, your Holiness. When?
We can’t waste any time. Contact him now. I take it you haven’t done this before?
No, Rogan said.
It may take time. The High Priest is very busy, but he’ll eventually respond. Your job is to wait until he returns contact.
Yes, your Holiness. We didn’t have a lot of time to speak during our last connection, but I took someone else from the motel. They’re from the True Faith, and were there for the woman too. I’m keeping him alive until you determine a better course of action.
What’s his name?
Rhett Scoble, the Disciple answered.
Okay. Tell the High Priest. He will direct you in that matter. Report back to me when you’re done, the First said.
Yes, my Holy, the Disciple answered.
The connection ended and the Disciple immediately broadcasted the High Priest’s code. He’d never done it before, but just as he didn’t feel fear sitting in the same room with the apocalypse, he felt no fear in contacting the High. It was an honor, one that very few Disciples were ever blessed with.