by Auri Blest
“‘The Dawn,’ I presume. You are spectacular.”
“The Dawn?”
“That is what I am told you are called.”
While he spoke, a flick of his hand instructed his men to spread out.
“Where is the child?”
“Where is the Director?”
“Simone,” he summoned.
Simone walked in with a gun on the Director. The whites of Simone’s eyes still glowed bright blue.
“There. Do you see how easy that was? Now where is the child?”
“Why don’t you ask Simone,” said Dawn.
He glanced over at Simone and back at Dawn. “You jest. What are you talking about?”
“Where did your people find Simone? I’ll tell you where. They found her lying half-dead on top of a dumpster. They didn’t bother to look inside of the dumpster, did they? Simone counted on that. She had just fought for her life and for the child.”
Dawn looked at Simone. Her eyes were glazed over. “Simone, you did all that you could do. She is safe because of you. Do you hear me? She survived. She is safe. Your love saved her. She dreams of you every night and longs for you every day. You were a perfect protector and the best mother that any child could want.”
The more Dawn talked, the more Simone’s features began to soften and her eyes became less blue.
The Emperor was astonished. His anger rose against Simone. Simone abruptly turned away from the Director and towards the Emperor and began shooting at him.
Cain and Ashanti approached Seth at the entrance that had been blown out. Seth held up his hand for them to wait.
“Where is his army?” Ashanti asked. “Why would the leader of the world be here without a vast army?”
“Legion X was his army,” Cain answered. “Can’t you see? They’ve been working together all this time, for some unknown reason. But, you can only betray someone so many times before they turn against you.”
Camille dove on the floor as Simone began shooting. She scrambled away from them and settled behind a cabinet.
The Emperor ran towards the landing pad which had begun to open. A helicopter rose out of the floor on a platform. Seth, Cain and Ashanti ran into the room shooting.
Jade ran from behind the helicopter throwing knives directly at the Emperor’s head. Underground and struggling with a slight limp from her fall, Jade had climbed onto the platform when she saw it rising.
Simone caught the Emperor in the shoulder with a bullet but Jade’s knives never made contact. Legion X stormed the room and deflected the knives because they needed him alive. One of the Emperor’s guards shot Simone and grabbed the Emperor. They slid under the helicopter and dropped down into the space under the platform. Legion X quickly followed them in pursuit.
In the chaos, Seth lost sight of Dawn. He found her kneeling over Simone. She leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.
Dawn looked up. “Follow them.”
“Where?!” yelled Cain. “I’m not going down there. I’m about to start that helicopter up and get the heck out of this nightmare!”
“The Emperor has a weapon of mass destruction,” Dawn stated.
Cain had started a jog towards the helicopter but stopped dead in his tracks.
“He’s mutated the blood borne pathogen that your Director there has been harvesting.”
“It cannot be released. It will become airborne and kill millions within seven days of its release. This ends here.”
“Can you stop him?” asked Cain.
“That is why I came.”
35
Cain directed Ashanti to stay back with Camille. “Stay behind the cabinet. I will come back for you.” He took his jacket off, grabbed two pistols off a slain soldier, and tucked one in his waistband. “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked Seth.
Seth looked at him and jumped down under the platform. Jade followed. Cain shook his head and mumbled obscenities under his breath as he lowered himself under the platform. Dawn was already down there and guided them down so they would not be injured from the drop.
They were in a large open chamber of a tunnel that wasn’t an erdstall. There were tire tracks on the ground from vehicles driving through. The breeze behind them let them know that they weren’t far from an opening to the outside.
Cain looked back in the direction of the breeze. He desperately wanted to flee, but something wouldn’t allow him to do it.
Dawn instructed them to descend further back into the tunnel. The passageway split into three corridors. They ran down the middle passage. It opened to another large area where they found the Emperor surrounded by Legion X, who began to chant, “She’s here.”
“Where is he hiding the virus?” Cain whispered.
“In him.”
Cain stared at her. Inside him? How the heck are we supposed to stop it, he thought.
Seth examined the way Legion X surrounded the Emperor. They looked more like a team standing together. Something’s not right here, he thought.
“Jade,” Seth whispered. He pointed to his eyes, their signal that meant to stay alert and be watchful of the enemy.
Dawn jumped ten feet over the top of Legion X and landed directly in front of the Emperor. Osiris stood behind the Emperor with his left hand around the Emperor’s neck. Two voices emitted from him. “I have been waiting for you. I cannot kill him, but you can.”
“You suddenly have morals? No, you know that what is inside of him will instantly kill you.”
“You cannot do this! I am your god!” yelled the Emperor. He appeared to have a broken leg, and he was bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound.
“You are not my god. You are a mere man, an evil, deceitful one at that,” said Dawn
Legion X began to chant, “Kill him.”
“You must be confused about who we are. Our desire is not to kill.”
Cain was confused. Then why the heck did we come down here?
Dawn stepped directly in front of the Emperor. He stared at her as if he thought he had some power over her. He really does think he’s a god, she thought. Before she knew what was happening, they both grabbed her.
Osiris grabbed her throat and the Emperor bit into her hand, which was the only exposed part of her body. His bite would transmit the virus directly into her circulatory system. Jade and Seth both heard, in their heads, Remember what you’ve learned.
Dawn sprawled back as the virus entered her system. Her captors stood on either side of her watching—waiting. This was their plan. The Emperor manipulated Legion X, who sought to kill him. When they found him, he told the Osiris of his plans. They would work together to bring her to submission in order to get the child; the one that Legion X called ‘the chosen one.’”
Jade gasped, then began shooting wildly at them. Cain joined her.
Seth ran to Jade’s side. “We can’t win like this!” He grabbed her arm. “We won’t make it out of here alive this way.”
“A little help here!” Cain yelled out as he ran out of bullets.
“Let’s go!” Seth yelled. He tossed Cain his rifle and Cain continued shooting, plowing down those that stood between them and Dawn. Seth ran forward, reached out and touched Dawn’s back as Jade dove and grabbed his free arm in midair. The same power they felt that day at Titanpointe ran through them again. They heard Dawn tell them to lift their hand. An electrified force shot out of their hands disintegrating Legion X. Cain fell back from the sheer force of it.
Dawn came forward to a full standing position and grabbed the hand that the Emperor had just bitten. She gritted her teeth, “No weapon formed against me… He didn’t say that the weapon would not be formed. He said that it would not prosper.”
Dawn’s hand began to fill with blood as an electric current ran through her hands causing her hands to glow. When she opened her hand the blood had turned to crystals and then the crystals to powder. She stepped forward quickly and pressed the powder into the Emperor’s agape mouth. He collapsed to the floor convulsing
.
Suddenly, Dawn jumped up, clapped her hands together above her head, and disappeared, leaving a blast of pressure that sent everyone flying off their feet.
In the city, David sat up in bed in a cold sweat. He stood and paced around his room. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Did I just have a vision? I need to walk. He left his room with no determined place to go. Before he knew it, he was up on the roof. Bishop stood before him where the pigeons were resting. He stared into the sky.
“Bishop is everything okay?” He was never up there late in the evening.
“Get everyone to the sanctuary. Dawn needs our help.”
David could see that Bishop was troubled. “The vision… You saw it too.”
Crystal stared hard at Hannah and watched as she began to pant. She then began shaking. Is she remembering something? Crystal turned as Raymond rushed into the room with Stephen on his heels.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Crystal turned back to face Hannah. She was gone.
Before Crystal could respond. Raymond’s radio went off.
“Juan to Ray.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s an emergency message from Bishop.”
“Copy. Meet me at the central computer station.”
“Crystal, what are you doing?”
She was on the floor looking under Hannah’s bed. She couldn’t respond. She had to be sure that what she thought happened actually happened.
“Come, Crystal. You need to be there for this message.”
Raymond jogged down the ramp. “What’s up?”
“Everyone at every location needs to start praying immediately for Dawn and the team,” said Juan.
Raymond hopped on a computer. “Send out an alert to every location. Let’s try to have everyone on one accord within twenty minutes. Crystal, can you meet everyone in the theatre and… Crystal?”
Crystal stood wide-eyed with her hand covering her mouth.
“Earth to Crystal…”
She shook her head. “Yes,” she said as an alarm went off throughout the campus. A computerized voice asked everyone to meet in the theatre.
“Ray, there’s something weird going on with the radar over the city.” Ray swung his chair around to the computer behind him where Guy was sitting.
Ray looked at the green dots on the screen. “What am I seeing here?”
“Quantum radar technology.” Guy answered with pride.
“Where is this coming from?”
“The IMO’s radar base.”
“Okay, later we will need to discuss this unauthorized hacking hobby that you have going on,” said Ray.
Guy looked away as he bit a nail off and spit it onto the floor.
“Really?”
“Oh, sorry,” Guy said, as he bent over to pick up the fingernail.
Ray studied the computer screen. “Put this up on one of the large screens on the wall.”
Guy stopped munching on his nails and began typing.
Ray looked up at the screen. “Jesus!”
“They’re surrounding the south sector of the city. Fighter jets, I would say.” responded Guy.
“Bishop.” Ray and Guy looked at each other. “There’s no time to warn him. I know they are off-the-grid, but someone there must have a computer for an emergency?”
“Not that I know of,” responded Guy.
“How did we get the emergency message from Bishop? I know he didn’t send a pigeon out this late.”
“The message came a few hours ago. It was wet and the ink ran. They’ve been trying to decipher it. Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” he said as he started typing on his keyboard.
“What are you doing?”
“Causing a news ticker to scroll across every building that has a display in the city.”
“You can do that?”
Guy shot Raymond a look that said, “This is a piece of cake.”
“What would you like it to say?”
“Bishop Protocol 2 stat. Let’s just hope that someone sees it.”
David couldn’t believe that he and Bishop had both seen the same thing; and giant eagle covered in flames descending on Dawn’s team. That was all the confirmation that Bishop needed. That was a sign that Dawn’s team was in trouble.
As David began to exit from the roof he noticed red lights in the distance. “Bishop, do you have binoculars up here?”
Bishop reached into a box and handed him a pair. The city is never lit up like this. Someone is doing this for a reason. David looked north of the building and turned the center dial to focus the binoculars.
Bishop watched as David’s mouth dropped open as he turned his head from left to right.
“What do you see?” asked Bishop.
David lowered the binoculars and looked at him. “Someone has programed all the news ticker displays to send a message.”
“They’re working?”
“Right now they are.”
“What does it say?”
“It’s a message for you.”
“For me?” Bishop grabbed the binoculars and read the ticker: Bishop Protocol 2 stat. He lowered the binoculars. “That means evacuate immediately.”
They both looked up as they began to hear a pulsing sound and then a low rumble. It was as if the sky began to vibrate. The sound grew louder.
“We need to get off this roof,” David exclaimed. “Wait, what is that?” David lifted the binoculars in time to see several missiles heading right for them.
Suddenly, there was a sonic boom and Dawn appeared on the roof in front of them in a stance as if she had just lowered into a curtsy with her arms stretched out to the sides. She came to a standing position, but didn’t lower her arms.
David took a step towards Dawn, but Bishop grabbed his arm motioning for him to stay where he was. They looked around. They could tell that something was happening but they couldn’t see anything. Dawn didn’t speak to them. David wasn’t sure she even noticed they were there. Her back was to them.
Dawn brought her arms directly above her head and held them there, pushing up. David and Bishop looked up to see the first of several missiles about to make contact. They ducked, and David yelled out as he attempted to cover Bishop as if he could protect him.
Just a few feet above, the missiles exploded. Dawn had created a force field around them that had grown beyond the roof and encompassed the entire structure. The missiles collided with the force field which continued to grow high above the building and rose so quickly that the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that carried the missiles were not able to avoid impact. They exploded.
David gasped. “How— What— What happened?”
“She is The Dawn,” said Bishop.
David’s eyes glazed over. He didn’t see Bishop standing in front of him. He saw the words of the prophecy. For the first time, he totally understood the prediction. The Dawn that they awaited wasn’t a time of day. It wasn’t a new beginning or period of enlightenment; it was the woman that stood before them. “The Dawn would bring forth a pure light…” were the next words of the prophecy. David wondered if this invisible barrier that she protected them with was some part of the “pure light.”
Just as he received this revelation, Dawn glanced back at them, seeing that they were okay. Then, as quickly as she had appeared, she disappeared.
David and Bishop stood staring at the spot that Dawn disappeared from.
Everyone spun around. Where did she go? Jade began shooting at Osiris as more of his minions swarmed in front of him. The Emperor was still collapsed on the floor. They didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Suddenly, Dawn reappeared in a curtsy like stance.
Cain watched as Legion X began to flee in terror. Dawn looked up just in time to witness Osiris sweeping around, horizontal to the ground, and grabbing Jade. Her arms and legs flailed as he pulled her back into a tunnel. Cain grabbed a rifle that was near him and chased after them.
What the heck am I doing? he thought a
s he ran. Since when did I become this person, or is this just the person that I used to be revealing himself? He followed Jade’s scream but was suddenly blinded by a light.
36
“NO!” Dawn screamed as Jade was dragged away. Jade had disappeared before, but Dawn always knew she was okay. This time was different. Legion X was sure to kill her. She charged at Seth and shielded him from debris as Legion X caused the ceiling to collapse behind them, sealing off the passage.
Dawn stood up and Seth watched as she began to beat on the sides of her head with her fists as she paced back and forth. He coughed from the dirt that filled the air which didn’t seem to affect her at all.
“Not Jade, not Jade, not Jade,” she yelled. “She’s my family!”
Seth shuddered as Dawn let out a blood-curdling cry. All of the emotion that had been locked away seemed to be engulfing her like a tidal wave.
“Dawn, we can still get to her. Tell me which way to go. We will find her.”
After all what he had witnessed, Seth knew that she could easily break through a wall. He didn’t know that heaven had instructed that she not follow Jade.
He stepped towards her as she looked up at the ceiling and yelled, “Haven’t I done all that you have asked?! Don’t take her from me! Please!”
Dawn closed her eyes, lifted her arms and began to rotate them in reverse circles over her head. He noticed that her hand was fully healed from where the Emperor had bitten her.
Sparks of lightening began to emit from her as if she were a human plasma ball. Seth didn’t know what she was doing but he had the feeling that she was building up a force. “My life for hers,” She yelled. The ground shook as she cried out in turmoil.
“Dawn,” Seth yelled. He stepped forward and reached out to touch her. Upon contact, his breath shot out of him as he felt a shock run through his body, and the force of it threw him back against the wall.
“You promised me!” she yelled at him. “You promised you would take care of her!”
Seth began to tear up from seeing her in so much pain. He watched her cry out. The force was getting stronger. He ran to her, “Dawn, remember all that God has done! He has never failed you! Don’t give up!”