The Prophet: Life: A Sci-Fi Thriller

by David Beers

  David turned around. The wall recognized someone was looking at it and turned translucent, allowing him to look out at the burning skies.

  “What is it, David?” Rebecca pushed.

  “I don’t know. Something. At least that’s what it feels like.”

  Rebecca stood and walked across the kitchen, standing behind her brother. She reached forward and put her hand on his elbow. “You’re tired. You’re stressed. But if you can’t trust me, David, who can you trust? If I’m lying to you, who is telling you the truth?”

  He turned around and she saw gray light flickering in his pupils. They weren’t fully engrossed, only flirting, but he bore down with them.

  “I’m not going to lie to you, David. You’re my brother.”

  He didn’t nod, didn’t say a word. Only stared, his power just underneath the surface, not rising all the way up. Rebecca didn’t know what he was doing, whether he was searching or only trying to frighten her. She met his stare and kept her hand on his elbow.

  The light finally died, his pupils taking full control again.

  “I’m going outside for a little while. We only have a few hours, so if you want to sleep, do it now.”

  He turned away from her and walked from the kitchen to the patio door. Rebecca watched him go, her hand still hanging in the air where his elbow had been.

  It started trembling the moment David stepped outside. Rebecca looked down at it, her whole hand shaking as if she’d just pulled it from a bucket of ice.

  What are you doing? What in the hell are you doing?

  She turned from the kitchen and found the small bedroom she’d been given when they first arrived. The wall recognized her, dissipated momentarily, and then formed back once she walked inside.

  The tears came then, flooding her eyes. Rebecca practically fell onto the bed, collapsing as much as deciding to sit. Both hands were trembling now and she couldn’t see much of anything, the tears combined with the room’s darkness practically blinding her.

  Your brother, she thought. THAT’S YOUR BROTHER AND TONIGHT YOU MAY WATCH HIM DIE.

  She felt a noise gathering in her throat, threatening to rip out of her and into the silent house. It took everything in her to squelch it, forcing it down before her pain could be given voice and alert everyone.

  You touched him and told him you wouldn’t lie.

  But you know what’s coming tonight. You and only you.

  Rebecca dropped her face into her hands and let the tears fall in earnest, unable to hold them back. If David walked in now, the game ended. But she couldn’t do anything else—the pain, the treachery, it was all too much.

  What? Why are you crying now? Because the deed’s about to be done? You’ve been plotting this for years, so don’t turn into a coward because you’re a few hours from it happening. You could have stopped it at any time, but you didn’t.

  The words were true but it changed nothing. Not the pain, nor the guilt, and Rebecca sat in both of them.

  Eventually, she was able to stop sobbing and lay down on the bed. She stuck her hands under the bottom of her shirt, wrapping it in her fists. She was cold but didn’t want to disturb the blanket underneath her.

  Her brother’s death was almost here.

  That was the final truth. He would die and hopefully she would too, because she certainly didn’t want to live any longer with what she’d done. Not these smaller treacheries, nor the one she would commit tonight. David’s murder.

  Rebecca cried inside her room while David stood alone outside the house. It was an egg shaped thing, small compared to anything built inside the True Faith—or any other Ministry for that matter. David stood on a balcony that wrapped around the entire middle of the structure. It stretched about six feet out, with a protective barrier stretching up past the railing and connecting back with the building. You couldn’t see the barrier, a translucent substance, though also porous, allowing the outside air to breeze over the platform.

  David wondered briefly how these sky people dealt with bad weather, especially being suspended over an ocean. Looking at the clouds gathering just above him, he thought he would soon find out.

  The night hung in front of David, he who had mastered the world. The fires that burned around him, they burned because of him. He controlled this world, and if anyone who hadn’t already submitted were to poke their heads from their destroyed homes, they would die.

  He’d taken over the world, and now had only one enemy left to vanquish. The woman arriving in just a few hours. After her death, he could head to the Nile and complete the Union. Once he killed her, he could meet his fate and completely change the world.

  Yet, standing before what had taken him 20 plus years to do, David felt none of that.

  A conqueror the world had never known—perhaps not even with Veritros—and he felt like it all might crumble between his fingers at any moment. In fact, it might already be crumbling, and he hadn’t known it until this moment.

  What do you know? What? A feeling? That’s what you had about Rebecca, and now … that’s good enough to judge her completely? A lot of years, David. A lot of trust shared both ways. Feeling something inside a transport—what’s that worth? Is it worth your soul? Because if you’re wrong here, that’s what you’d be giving up. Not to the Unformed, but to darkness eternal.

  He stared out with human eyes, not the Touched’s. He saw the world as humans did, and he felt their pain.

  A feeling. Suspicion and then pain. One led to the other. But his feelings bore fruit. He’d felt a traitor amongst his followers, and then the True Faith came to kill him and destroy everything he’d built.

  Was this feeling any different than that one? Was it any less correct? The only difference was he felt it about his sister and not some unknown.

  You need to be clear about what you’re saying here. Very, very clear. A feeling is one thing, but you need to name what it is you’re thinking.

  And that’s what he didn’t want to do.

  Not now. Not ever.

  Not her.

  Not Rebecca.

  It’d been her he’d gone to when he was first Touched. Not Rhett. Not his parents. She had been the person he told, young and scared with tears in his eyes. Because he hadn’t understood it, the magnitude weighing on his 14 year old shoulders. Threatening to break them.

  It’d been her who helped him start recruiting, bringing Rhett in, and then Christine. The one who challenged him when no one else would, making him see things from another perspective, even when he didn’t want to.

  What are you saying? Out loud now. Don’t hide from it, if that’s what you want to accuse her of.

  David swallowed, tears in his eyes.

  Is it her? Is Rebecca the traitor?

  Twelve

  The High Priest woke before the sun rose, as he always did. He lay in his bed for an hour, not moving nor opening his eyes. If anyone had watched him, they wouldn’t have known he was awake at all … though such a thought never crossed his mind.

  The High Priest’s Disciple was approaching, bringing the young woman with him. Perhaps, out of everyone involved in the endeavor, the High Priest knew more than them all. He knew the parties coming, his own faithful, as well as the weapon. He also knew what the end game was here, and that separated him from many of the others. They might all have different goals, but after last night, his objective stood supreme.

  Corinth came to him in the night, in a dream. It had been a while since Corinth revealed himself, though the High Priest never worried about the long absence. He believed Corinth’s presence might contribute to his growing insanity, and so His staying at bay wasn’t necessarily bad. The High believed Corinth would come when it was necessary, and no more.

  The High Priest was always a boy in these dreams, and Corinth appeared as his father. He wore the same clothes his father had, was the same height, the same weight—the only difference being his father’s head was replaced with Corinth’s.

  The High Priest
had forgotten his birth name, but that was okay, Corinth never needed to call him by it. In the dream last night, he and Corinth had been sitting on the High Priest’s living room floor. Here, in the One Path, not where he used to live when underground.

  “A lot of people are coming here, aren’t they?” Corinth asked, His voice taking on different tones. One word might be the High Priest’s father’s voice, and the next Corinth’s.

  The High Priest nodded, his child’s body feeling so foreign to the old man that now lay in bed.

  “What are you going to do with them all?”

  “The girl,” the little boy said. “I want to look at her brain.”

  “Why?”

  “I think there might be something in it I can use. I want to understand this Black, this Unformed.” His own voice sounded like himself, now, holding none of youth’s levity.

  “So you’re going to kill her?”

  “Yes, unless I can somehow keep her alive while studying her brain.”

  “What about the rest?” Corinth asked.

  “I’m going to kill them.”

  “All of them?”

  The little boy nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It seems the easiest solution.”

  “And what about the weapon? Will it be easy to kill him?”

  The High Priest’s brow furrowed and he looked down at his father’s shoes. He hadn’t thought too much about the weapon lately, his thoughts returning more and more to the girl’s brain. And now, with Corinth in front of him, perhaps that had been a mistake.

  “No. Probably not,” he finally said.

  “The weapon is a tough thing to kill. Always has been.” Corinth reached down next to him and picked up a severed head. The High Priest hadn’t seen it there before, wasn’t sure it had been there.

  Corinth dropped it between the two of them. It landed with a thud, specks of blood splattering on the wood from the torn neck arteries.

  The High looked at the face, and saw it was a woman’s. Her eyes stared straight up at the ceiling, unaware of the two people now studying her.

  “Is that Veritros?” the boy asked.

  “Yes,” Corinth said.

  “How long have you had her head?”

  “A thousand years or so,” Corinth said, as if he couldn’t remember the exact date.

  “What’s it mean?” the High asked, unsure why his God had pulled a dead woman’s head out.

  “It means you should ask yourself what you want, when it comes to the weapon, my High Priest.”

  “What I want?” the little boy looked up at the face that was not his father’s.

  “Yes.”

  The High Priest didn’t know how a decapitated head meant such a thing, but who was he to challenge Corinth?

  “I think I’d like her brain.”

  “But not to stop the weapon?”

  “No. Just for me. To keep.”

  Corinth nodded. “I don’t see any problem in that. For so long you have focused only on My will. I think your own needs should be taken into account.”

  “What about Veritros?” the little boy asked, looking at the decapitated head. The skin was pale, but otherwise, didn’t look like the years had laid much claim to it.

  “What about her?”

  “I know the truth about her. I know why we won last time. Perhaps with that truth we could win again.”

  “I’d only ask you what you want, my High Priest. If you want the world to end, then let it. If you want to try and save it, then do so,” Corinth told him, His head sitting upon the father’s neck.

  “You don’t have a preference, my Savior?”

  “No, not anymore. You’ve been alone long enough. You’ve been loyal to me, some would say much longer than you should have been, and I will reward that. You can have whatever you want, and forget about Vertiros and what she may or may not have known. Think only of yourself.”

  This morning, the High Priest awoke at the same time as every day previously for innumerable years. He awoke with his mind finally in tatters. He had thought himself going insane for some time, but when it finally occurred, he didn’t even notice. Corinth told him he could have whatever he wanted after being alone for nearly endless years.

  The world didn’t matter anymore.

  The Black didn’t matter.

  Survival didn’t matter.

  Of all importance was the girl’s brain. The High Priest lay alone in his bed as he had for most of his life, and fantasized about the brain lying next to him. A small vat, perhaps one that fit perfectly to its round shape, lying … on his chest? Yes, that sounded superb. He could watch it move up and down, up and down, in perfect harmony with his breathing.

  The High Priest hadn’t known he was lonely, but as he thought of the brain, he realized the desolation of the years behind him. All of it spent without anyone. All of it spent worshipping Corinth.

  The High’s reward would be great. He would hold the brain as the world ended, and finally know what he’d been denied for so long.

  The Pope wasn’t a general, had never been trained as one, nor ever desired war. Yule was a peacetime Pope, or at least he had been. The Lord did not ask his servants’ preferences in matters of the universe, though. He simply gave commandments and it was his servants’ duty to pick up whatever yoke He threw down.

  The Pope sat in the back of a very large transport. Thirty people were in front of him, none of whom he actually knew. They, of course, all knew of him and were loyal subjects of the true God—the God of Abraham and Isaac. They had answered his call and were now fighting an undeclared war, all because he said it should be so.

  None of the other Ministries knew this was taking place.

  Certainly the High Priest and the True Faith didn’t.

  Yule was breaking all international laws in his quest for this woman, and those in front of him were aware. Yet, they were here. He was here.

  The plan was simple: procure Nicki Sesam at any and all costs. Their transport was a massive war bird, as the General called it. They were flocked by what Yule thought of as pigeons (wearing a smile as he did so). Three hundred smaller transports encapsulated the war bird, creating a weapon inside weapons.

  They were hours away from the One Path. They encountered attacks along the way, people launching projectiles from the ground at their ships, but those in front of Yule handled it all admirably. A couple of deaths—and Yule would pray for their souls if he survived, yet he was proud of those carrying the yoke the Lord forced upon them.

  He knew where Nicki was; Daniel had remained behind and continued his contact with the girl. They possessed the firepower to do what was necessary; Yule wasn’t worried about his own weapons, but what those holding Nicki might do. Would they kill her rather than give her up? Yule didn’t know because he couldn’t understand the High Priest’s mind.

  None of this should be happening; the world should be fully united behind the Nile River plan, but instead, Yule was here, operating a covert war to steal back an Old World citizen.

  He shook his head and closed his eyes.

  Anger rose in the pope, and he didn’t want to entertain it right now. He needed to focus on God. He needed to remain calm, because that was God’s will. Not his anger, nor his judgment of a man he didn’t know. All of that was ego, perhaps even Lucifer. Maybe everything around him now, besides his men serving, was of Lucifer—trying to distract him from what was important. The world would never be as he wanted it, because there was sin, and to rage against it now would just be the ravings of a foolish old man.

  Yule prayed.

  Lord, I do not believe you want to sacrifice your creation to this creature we don’t understand. Any being that brings such death and destruction is outside your love and grace. So many dead, so many wounded, and all at the hands of this weapon, sent by a creature that doesn’t live within your law. I need your strength now, to remain focused on what is important so that I may do your will and help rescue the f
aithful. In your son’s name, Amen.

  Yule didn’t open his eyes, but remained resting, feeling God’s love bask over him. He was at peace, and though that would change very, very shortly … at least he felt it for a time.

  Message received.

  The First Priest turned around so that he faced the transport’s outer wall, losing sight of the ship they were following. He knew the message was important, the High Priest’s nanoID implanted inside of it.

  Show me, he said.

  The message played.

  My First Priest, your mission has changed. After much meditation, Corinth’s will has grown clear in my mind. The weapon’s death is secondary. Whatever happens, the girl is to live. Your mission is to ensure that she makes it to me.

  The First Priest heard the message inside his head, though he had to play it back three times. It wasn’t making sense, the words discombobulating as they flowed through his mind. Finally, though, the message clicked in place and the First realized the High truly was insane.

  The last time they spoke, the High Priest commanded the First to kill the weapon. There had been sense in that, even if in doing so, it meant the First Priest would die. This, though? The First’s mission now changing to deliver a girl to the High, as if she were his concubine? And at the possible expense of the weapon’s continued existence?

  He was glad he had turned away to read it, sure his face revealed things he didn’t want Brinson to see.

  He did his best to quickly regain his composure; he needed to turn back around momentarily, and he must not show any of his feelings to Brinson. The two of them had climbed aboard a larger transport an hour ago, one that could hold 10 to 15 people, but for now only carried them. Brother Manor had remained in Brinson’s transport, it falling back for his ‘safety’.

  Which was partly true.

  The First Priest did want to keep him safe, for now at least. If they all survived this, he had plans for the young man. Plans for the young lady standing behind him, too.