The Prophet Box-Set: Books 1-4

by David Beers

But … this?

  Rachel Veritros stared on uncomprehendingly.

  She couldn’t step forward, something was blocking even her. She could do nothing but watch as Nicki existed in a world that sat between life and death.

  The world, without any doubt, was in turmoil. Again, it had started to burn. Everyone—literally every single person alive—was aware and in the midst of it. Everyone besides Nicki Sesam.

  Nicki, for the first time since discovering the sight, had found happiness. Not total happiness, such a thing can’t actually exist; but for her, she was in a good place.

  She wasn’t wandering around in a daze. She knew what had happened, remembered it very clearly. The dark man staring at her with those gray eyes, the only thing about him actually alive. She remembered the fat man, the thin man, and her father. She hadn’t known what would happen in the end, when she pulled all that static back to her, but her last words to the dark man had been right.

  Let’s be done with it all.

  If they were forcing her to kill her father or herself, then they were simply forcing her to commit suicide.

  She had thought she might die, but she hadn’t been sure. She only knew there were two choices, to let the light continue on its path forward, or to bring it back. And since her father was there, she’d done the latter.

  Nicki knew she wasn’t inside her own head. This wasn’t some psychological trip, but rather a …

  And that’s where language broke down.

  Because it wasn’t a physical place, nor was it fully spiritual.

  She was in-between.

  It was the only phrase she could think to describe it, but then the natural question to ask from there was, in between what?

  She didn’t know, and she found herself okay with that.

  Not knowing, but still being safe, Nick found a sort of peace. Not the enraptured type of peace that she’d felt at that black, exploding border. It was closer to the peace she’d felt with her father, back in the Old World. Before all this started.

  Here, in this place, she wasn’t running from anything, nor chasing. For the first time in a long time, she was simply existing.

  Nicki stood on a road, right in the middle of it. The road was black and looked to be made of glass … with three lines of neon blue lights running through it. The sky above was the same neon blue, though dark—as if night had fallen on this in-between world. Nicki stood there for some time, looking at the place around her.

  It was a neighborhood, just like any she might have seen in the Old World, yet—except everything was made of that black glass, with different shades of neon lights running through it. Some pink, some orange, some green. It was beautiful, but slightly frightening too.

  Is it always night here?

  And Nicki had no real way of knowing if it was night … yet, that still felt correct.

  Nicki walked across the road, her feet silent on the black glass beneath her. She wondered what would happen if she threw a rock at any part of this place, whether the entire world would shatter and then she would simply fall forever.

  She moved from the road to the lawn of one of the houses. The grass was made of the same black glass, yet it bent beneath her feet, the same way real grass would. She knelt down and touched it, feeling its cool slickness. Nicki pulled at a blade, breaking it off. The glass shattered at the inflection point and tiny flecks dropped to the ground.

  They laid there for a minute, black on black, and then Nicki watched as the shattered pieces sunk into the glass beneath.

  Nicki stared for a second longer, enraptured by this place. She probably should have been frightened—would have been—if she hadn’t just left something much, much worse than a neon world.

  She stood and walked across the lawn to the house in front of her. The strips running through it glowed pink, shining and reflecting off of the glass building.

  She was halfway across the lawn when the door opened.

  A woman stepped out onto the stoop; she pulled the door partly closed behind her so that Nicki couldn’t see in, but she didn’t close it all the way.

  The woman—besides Nicki—appeared to be the only thing in this world not made of glass.

  Brown hair hung to her shoulders and something about her looked vaguely familiar, though Nicki didn’t think she’d actually seen her before. Perhaps she only saw familiarity in her because the rest of this world was so unfamiliar.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” the woman said.

  Nicki didn’t have a clue how to respond, so she asked, “How do you know?”

  “Where’s your house?”

  And Nicki almost laughed at the question, because it was too obvious and too easy. She didn’t have one, and if ownership in this neighborhood determined whether one belonged, then she didn’t.

  Nicki shook her head and looked at the black glass beneath her feet.

  “Is anyone looking to sell?” she asked, grinning.

  Nicki heard the door shut and looked up, half frightened the woman had gone back inside, but she was still standing there.

  “How did you get here? Did you die?”

  “Die?” Nicki asked, thinking about the question. “I don’t think so, but maybe.”

  “What do you remember?”

  Nicki smiled again, feeling more comfortable here with this strange woman in this strange land than she had in the past month. “It’s a lot to explain. But I remember it all. I don’t think I died.”

  “Then you definitely shouldn’t be here.”

  “Where is here?” Nicki asked.

  “There isn’t an official name,” the woman said, offering a smile for the first time. “I call it The Land of the Unjustly Killed, but that might just be my prerogative.”

  Rachel Veritros watched, unsure what to do. She understood the danger on Earth, perhaps better than anyone else. Yet out here, looking in, Rachel could do nothing. She was only an observer, and the Union was growing close. The Prophet had survived, taking more of the Unformed’s power in exchange for more of his soul. His power was growing, and the only person who could challenge him was lost inside some world that Rachel didn’t understand, nor could she enter.

  So Rachel watched, looking for any sign of structural weakness in the outer boundaries of the world. Some place where she might be able to enter.

  And when the woman walked out of the house, she might have looked vaguely familiar to Nicki, but Rachel recognized her well. She knew the woman standing on the stoop.

  And suddenly, without any doubt, Rachel Veritros knew all was lost.

  The woman walked out onto the black grass. The lawns sprawling the neighborhood were the only places without neon lights running through them, containing only that bendable black glass.

  “Were you unjustly killed?” Nicki asked.

  “When I first got here, I thought that was the case. That was a long time ago, though. Now, I guess it depends on who you ask.”

  Nicki heard another door open from across the street. She turned to it and a person poked their head out of the door. They looked at the two of them for a second and then quickly went back inside.

  “I think everyone knows you’re here.”

  “Why don’t they come out?”

  “They can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not on their lawn,” the woman said, still looking at the neighbor’s house. “Had you shown up on their lawn, I would only be able to look at you, too.”

  “I don’t understand this place.”

  The woman smiled. “I don’t either. I guess I just sort of understand the rules, and have a few theories about them.” She looked at Nicki. “How did you get here? If you’re not dead, then that doesn’t really align with the rules.”

  “Are you dead?”

  “Almost 20 years now.”

  “You’ve been here the whole time?”

  The woman nodded, still looking at Nicki for an answer to her question.

  “I really don’t know,�
�� Nicki said. “Something was happening, and then I reacted. I had a choice and I made one that I thought would kill me, but now I don’t think it did. Next thing I knew, I was standing on the road.” She turned and pointed.

  The woman stood silently for a moment, staring at where Nicki pointed.

  After a moment, she said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Tidus

  Tidus was a bit like a King, at least sometimes he thought that, though he always (almost always) remembered who he served.

  He was only a King for the moment, that’s what he had to remember. In here, inside the Globe of One, his kingdom ruled. It was his mission to expand the borders, because even a King answered to God, and God most certainly was coming.

  “How much longer?” Tidus asked. He had asked it before, but forgotten the answer.

  The man in front of him only giggled.

  Tidus thought he had been in the Globe for a day. Maybe two, but that might be pushing it. The past grew hazy for Tidus, and he knew it hadn’t always been that way. His memory used to work, before they’d tossed him into the pit. Now, though, it was broken—like a lot of other things inside him.

  He remembered ships arriving at the pit, remembered them lowering to where he and others clung to the edge. He didn’t know what brought the ships, but it might have been the fact they were fucking swimming around the pits when they weren’t supposed to be moving.

  And when he thought about it, that was hilarious.

  He giggled.

  Without looking back, the man in front of him giggled too.

  It didn’t matter; Tidus wouldn’t be able to remember everything that happened before he got here, no matter how hard he tried. If it wasn’t for the Prophet, Tidus would have been lost—but the Prophet had given him purpose. He was to take this Globe, and kill everyone inside it.

  The first hour had been a free-for-all. They docked and people died by the thousands. No security forces had been able to get down far enough to stop them, so they finally blocked everything off. No swings worked on any of the floors Tidus now owned, and the doors moving upward had hardened so that no one could step through them. Tidus wasn’t certain, but he thought the doors and the pits were made of a similar substance.

  Though he doubted the doors drove people insane.

  He giggled.

  No, the people that lived here were perfectly fine, no broken synapses to be found in any of them!

  All of that might be true, but they didn’t have the Prophet on their side, and that’s why they would lose. Sane but not safe.

  Tidus—at this point in his life—would much rather be insane and safe.

  He didn’t know the name of the man in front of him, only that he had the Blood of the Touched, just like Tidus. Everyone that had come with him possessed the Blood, and all of them were … wait for it …

  As crazy as Tidus!

  Focus, focus, focus, he thought. Gotsta focus on what’s in front of you.

  The man in front of Tidus looked like some kind of cross between a human and an octopus, if the octopus had been made of gray static.

  Tidus almost giggled again at that, but forced it back down.

  The man sat in front of a large panel, ones and zeros running across at a rapid pace. His hands were on the glass panel, palms pressed down, though they were doing nothing. The work was being done by the static strands (Tentacles! Tidus’s mind tried to shout, nearly causing another giggle fit). They fanned out around his palms, lying lightly on the glass, somehow figuring out the codes that would force the doors to soften again.

  This was happening all across their current floor. Hundreds of people pressed against panels.

  Tidus didn’t have a clue how it worked, not any more than he did how the strands on his own hands had pulled him from the pit. If he wanted, he could walk up to that same panel and use his own tentacles (the word was just too damned funny), and they’d start cracking the code, too.

  The Prophet.

  That’s how this was happening.

  The Unformed.

  That’s all Tidus needed to know, and all he cared about anymore.

  That’s not true, he thought. You care about killing the people above you.

  He simply couldn’t help it then; he giggled.

  Because that was the truth, and the One Path be praised, the whole truth. He wanted to kill everyone in this Globe, and it wasn’t like before. This wasn’t a righteous war anymore. It wasn’t even about his father’s death, because they’d both taken up the black flag and gone to war. This was vengeance … because of what they’d done to him. Because they’d broken him, and at least some part of Tidus understood he would never be the same again.

  It didn’t matter. They were making progress, and that progress was speeding up, too. It took them six hours to break out of their first detainment on the third floor (though to be honest, the numbers were all really hazy for Tidus). Since then, they’d managed to go up 300 floors. Three hundred. They were halfway to the top, and though Tidus didn’t know exactly where the four Ministers were, he knew they’d eventually be found.

  No one was leaving this place.

  The Prophet had made sure of that, and the Unformed blessed him for such.

  A shudder went through the door to the left of the panel, and Tidus grinned. The door was open, and most likely, 50 more floors were open with it. They just needed to hurry before a new code was inserted into the programming.

  A beam shot through the door.

  Tidus looked to his left. One of his brothers stood looking down at his stomach, a large patch of blood spreading quickly over his clothing. The gray strands hanging from his hands faded out of existence.

  He’s dead, Tidus thought, stifling another giggle.

  There were armed forces on the other side of the doors now, but that was fine. Tidus was looking forward to it.

  Yule opened his eyes and looked across the large room. General Spyden had just entered.

  Yule had been praying, though unsure exactly what he was asking of God. He didn’t understand this world any longer, not what he saw on the large glass windows next to him, nor the information coming to them from outside.

  The Black had returned.

  The Globe of One was under attack, and after all the Ministers had commanded their armies be sent here, their own Ministries had exploded. The Black’s adherents rose up yet again, no longer running, but fighting with the same ruthlessness they’d shown weeks before.

  That was what Yule’s prayer had consisted of, mainly.

  God, has the Black returned?

  Has it really?

  Unable to believe it, and from Spyden’s current countenance, perhaps their own deaths were growing nearer as well.

  “Another 200 floors have fallen, Your Grace,” she said, not glancing to the other three people in the room. “They’re breaching them quicker now, with each floor they manage to break through, they crack code for nearly 100 more.”

  Yule looked to Trinant. The woman was staring at the massive windows, watching their silent movies. The images on them changed from time to time, the cameras moving to where action could be seen. It was always the same, though, and Yule had quit watching. The people with static clinging to their hands killing everyone they saw, and savagely. Sometimes kicking in their skulls instead of using the weapon in their hand.

  Once in a while, a One Path faithful would kill one of theirs, and the First Priest always shouted when he saw it, as if his team had scored a point—momentarily forgetting the overall score.

  The First Priest never stopped watching the windows.

  “How far away are the reinforcements?” Trinant asked.

  “The Old World should be here in 12 hours. The True Faith and Constant Ministries are 18 hours out yet,” the General said.

  Yule and Benten had given the general permission to marshal their forces. Yule had let his own generals know that she was in charge, and to follow her orders. There wasn’t time for bickering, though
the First Priest somehow found some. It’d taken him 10 minutes to agree to hand the reigns over.

  Yule honestly wasn’t sure this man was an improvement from the High Priest. Just a different sort of crazy. It seemed to breed from the True Faith. Perhaps it was all those years underground.

  That’s not fair, his mind chastised. You know two of them; judge not, that you not be judged.

  “How long before the attackers reach us? The Black’s followers?” Trinant asked.

  “At their current pace, they’ll be here within the next 10 hours, but we’re attempting something new,” the general answered. “We’re drastically changing the codes used to seal off the floors.”

  Trinant looked from the window to Spyden. “What do you mean?”

  “Our security is based off a binary system right now. We’re going to insert a dual-binary system.”

  “What will that do?” Yule asked, only knowing that it sounded like they were doubling something.

  “It should make their code cracks about four times as difficult to achieve.”

  “So that’ll give us two days?” Trinant asked.

  “In a perfect world. Our modeling shows that they adapt quickly to the code, though. If that adaptation holds constant, we’re looking at 20 hours.”

  “The reinforcements will be here, but we still need a plan to get them inside,” Trinant said. “How is our own military holding up inside?”

  “We’ve lost approximately half of our soldiers.”

  Trinant nodded. “Civilians?”

  “Impossible to say accurately, Your Grace,” the general said. “A large proportion on every floor. Some are in hiding, but not many.”

  “How prepared are we if they make it here?” the First Priest interrupted.

  The general didn’t look to him until Trinant did. Yule glanced at Benten, and the Minister’s face appeared as disgusted as the other two.

  “We’ll be as prepared as every other floor,” the general said before turning back to her Minister.

  “Thank you,” Trinant said. “Update us at your convenience or whenever necessary.”