by Beers,David
"Andy, wait up. One second." The voice sounded out of breath, but Andy couldn't see who spoke--the parking lot was too dark. The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it.
Andy didn't move, just looked toward his car and saw he was about twenty feet away.
"Thanks," the man said, finally coming within view.
"Mr. Mack?" Andy said.
"Yeah. Saw you over here and wanted to say hey. How are you?"
"What the hell are you doing out here?"
"Thought we could talk about your theory on The Reckoning. Got a minute?"
"What?" Andy didn't have any idea what the man was referring to, his brain wasn't making the connections fast enough--couldn't get past why his sophomore year language teacher would be in this parking lot.
The man sounded out of breath twenty seconds ago, but now he smiled, not looking the slightest bit winded.
"You know, your thoughts on how everyone is about to be wiped out. Can you talk about that right now?"
Andy, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar, never saw the cloth or hand that came from behind. He only saw the same darkness as his sister.
Chapter 13
Skelly didn't want to open her eyes. She wanted to stay inside her dream, but reality was pulling and she knew she couldn't stay.
"No!" she screamed at the woman in her dream. "No! Don't let me go!"
The woman only smiled, though, having not said a word the entire time they spent together. Her whole body at complete peace, even now, as Skelly begged to stay.
But she couldn't, because life kept tugging, telling her it wasn't done.
"I don't want to leave," she whimpered, knowing it was too late. Her conscious mind swam to the surface, pushing past her subconscious and the places it took her while asleep.
Skelly opened her eyes.
She recognized nothing, lying on her side and seeing both a bed and a chair she didn't recognize. She blinked a few times, not necessarily caring where she was, but trying to understand what she saw. She'd never seen anything like this before. Hadn’t seen a chair like the one across the room or a bed like the one she lay on, not even in her reading of history.
What is this?
She sat up slowly, her head feeling like she drank a whole bottle of cough syrup--imbalanced, like it might simply roll right off her neck, onto the bed, and then fall to the floor before she even knew what happened.
Skelly put her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes, momentarily forgetting about the room that so captivated her moments before.
"Uuuugh," she moaned.
"Oh, Geneesssssiiiisss."
Skelly's eyes flew open at the sound of another voice, her brain quickly registering who she heard.
Andy.
She turned to his voice, ignoring the way the room spun as she did. Another bed, exactly like hers except for a different hue.
"Damn my head hurts," Andy said, his eyes closed, not even bothering to look at Skelly or the rest of the room.
"Andy, where are we?" Skelly asked, her mind pushing past the pain and rapidly assimilating how fucked they were. She remembered small patches of what happened before she awoke. Mr. Mack's room. Telling him to fuck off and that she was leaving.
A woman.
"I don't know," Andy said, interrupting her thought flow as he opened his eyes and looked around the room. "What the fuck is this?"
She heard a little panic in his voice and immediately felt the same rise in her.
"I don't know. How did you get here?" she said.
"What is this place?" Andy ignored her, still focusing on the room around them.
She looked away from him and back into the room, taking in more of it now.
It was ...
"Amazing," Andy said, both the panic and pain previously underlying his words replaced with awe.
Skelly looked down at her bed, a bright blue color radiating off it. Except, she wasn't lying on a bed, not in any traditional sense of the word. She lay on computer code.
She saw it beneath her, still code, symbols coloring every single piece of the furniture. Skelly moved, turning so that she knelt and watched as the code changed, manipulating itself as she switched positions. Each piece of code shone that brilliant blue into the room.
"Can you read this?" she said, not looking up at her brother.
"Some of it. It's complex. Much more complex than I've ever seen."
"What can you read?" Skelly couldn't pull her eyes away from her bed to even consider looking at the rest of the room.
"It's ... fuck, man, I don't know. It looks like the code is somehow reading us. That we're creating it?"
She glanced to his bed, the color a pale pink.
"Get up," she said.
"What?"
"Get off the bed."
He understood and scrambled off it. The color died the moment he stepped away from it, and more, the bed's code read only ones and zeros.
"Holy shit," Andy said. He leaned forward and touched it again. The bed immediately lit up, the code changing, moving away from his hand like ripples in a lake, until the whole bed lit up with pink.
"That's not possible," Skelly said. She didn't have any kind of in-depth training in coding, never cared about it, but she did know humans couldn't do this. Humans could barely replicate the most basic of The Genesis's creations.
She stood up from her own bed and glanced at her feet.
"Look." She pointed at Andy's.
Pink at his.
Blue at hers.
"Every part of this room is a program …," he said
Skelly didn't think he was saying it to himself or her, simply letting realizations flow from his mind.
"What is this?" he said, slowly moving his feet across the floor. He watched as he stepped forward, the floor changing codes with each pink footfall.
"You're up!"
Both Skelly and her brother simultaneously jumped back and turned toward the front of the bedroom.
Mack stood there.
Andy stepped forward, forgetting the last five minutes of amazement. "What the fuck did you do?"
Skelly went back to her thoughts. A woman. She remembered seeing a woman and then ...
Nothing. Not until waking up here.
"Calm down, Andy. Just calm down. You're both completely safe."
"You're gonna be shot!" Andy shouted. "As soon as I get a Lawman, you're dead. You know that? Dead."
Mack's smile didn't fade and Skelly looked on, alternating quickly between abject terror and intense curiosity.
Why was he smiling?
Why had they been kidnapped?
Questions nagged her mind like a woodpecker going at a tree, bringing up something new nearly every second.
Andy didn't appear to have any questions. Only anger. He walked closer to Mack, clearly ready to attack, but trying to assess the danger.
"Hey, look, just come with me a little ways. I want you to meet someone."
"I'm not going fucking anywhere, except to an officer. Get out of my way," Andy said, his hands turning to fists. Skelly watched Mack's hands, neither of them moving at all, hanging decidedly uninterested at his sides.
"Andy, I'll let you leave if you come with me. If you don't, you and your sister aren't going anywhere. That's about as clear as I can make it."
"Don't even talk about her." His voice sounded like gravel grating against sandpaper.
"Look, I'm not going to tell you to drop the big-brother schtick, but your only options right now are to wait in this room or come with me. There aren't any others."
Andy looked to Skelly for a second and she knew what came next. "No," she whispered.
He went forward, his fists raised, with Mack's smile not changing at all.
"Okay," Mack sighed. "I'll be back."
Andy didn't stop moving forward, but Mack looked down at the floor, right at Andy's feet. The teacher-turned-kidnapper didn't move at all, not even a single finger.
Skelly's eyes widen
ed and her mouth dropped, her skin turning a pale white. The shading around Andy's feet, the pink, turned a deep gray and Andy started moving backwards--even as his feet kept their forward motion, he only moved in reverse.
Andy hit the wall with a thump, his head snapping back against it--and for a brief second the wall turned the same pale pink as the floor.
"WHAT THE HELL?" he said even as his feet kept trying to run at Mack but not moving forward a single inch.
"I'll be back," the teacher said.
* * *
"What are we going to do?" Skelly asked an hour later.
Andy watched the clock on the wall as if he thought he could escape through it.
"You know anything about kidnappings?" he said.
"Kidnappings? No?"
"I read up on them a little in middle school. I used to want to write books and horror subjects were my favorite. One thing kidnappers always do is try to disorient the victim. They don't want you know what time it is, how much time has passed. Things like that. The clock doesn't really play into that theory, huh?"
Skelly shook her head. "Are you listening to me? What are we going to do? I don't care about the clock. We're stuck here and it's past midnight. I know Mom and Dad have called Lawmen."
"I don't know what to do," Andy said as he turned to his sister. "All I'm saying is this doesn't seem like a true kidnapping, certainly not like the ones I read about."
Andy watched Skelly lay down on her pillow. It lit up blue as soon as she touched it. She was crying and didn't want him to see.
She's only seventeen. She's looking to you to get her out of this, not give her your theories.
"Hey," he said. He thought about getting up and moving to her bed, but that would feel awkward. He couldn't remember the last time they’d been that close, physically and emotionally. "Hey, Skelly, we're going to be okay. My point is, I don't think they want to hurt us. That fuck Mack said we could leave once we went with him and when he comes back, I'll be as cool as a cucumber. We'll go with him and then we'll get the fuck outta here. The guy will be dead within twenty-four hours. Watch."
Skelly turned over, tears on her face. "I'm scared, Andy."
Had she ever said that before? No. Not to him and probably not to anyone else either. His sister wasn't scared of anything--not tests at school and not The Reckoning.
He stood up and walked to her bed, sitting down next to her. The part he sat on turned the same pink that followed him everywhere he went, spreading a few inches out from where he sat and then reaching a clear demarcation of bright blue. The direction of the coding changed too, where he sat it ran perpendicular to the code produced from Skelly.
"We're going to be fine. I promise. Mack might be sick, but I don't think he's a killer. People are looking for us. And plus, you're Skelly Thompson. You're not scared of anything. You're a fucking tiger, kid."
She leaned into her pillow, wiping her tears with it.
A soft knock echoed from the only door in the room. Mack opened it as both of them turned.
"Are you two feeling like you want to talk yet?" He stuck his head in as if he was interrupting two lovers, letting them know that dinner was about to be served.
Andy didn't stand up from the bed this time. He knew that he couldn't attack Mack anymore than he could fly. He didn't understand how it happened, but he couldn't fight whatever Mack had done. The room reacted to the code, yet Andy couldn't overcome Mack's coding. The room dictated Andy's movements and he wasn't about to attempt it again.
Which meant, the pink color he saw wasn’t following him, but rather Andy was somehow creating it. And Mack was manipulating the world with it.
"Where are we going?" he said. Skelly sat up on the bed, hugging the pillow to her chest.
"I have someone I want you to meet. Or rather, someone that wants to meet you. Both of you. He's the reason you're here, believe it or not. I'm simply making the introduction."
Andy looked Mack over. The man wasn't smiling this time, but appeared sincere, though that didn't matter one titty-fuck to Andy.
"We can leave once we talk to this person?" He wasn't going to threaten Mack anymore. Andy just hoped he could be there when Lawmen shot him.
"Yes. We don't plan on keeping you any longer than you want to be here."
Andy looked to his sister. She nodded, needing no words.
"Fine. Let's go."
* * *
Skelly watched Mack walk down the hallway in front of her, unable to take her eyes from his footsteps. They looked the same as hers, only his created that same dark gray she saw when he pushed Andy against the wall. Each time any of the three touched the floor, the code rippled out, changing from the ones and zeros to unique characters with each footfall. Not even each person, but each person's footfall.
Mack stopped walking and Skelly looked up, finally aware that she didn't have a clue as to where they had gone. She was so enraptured with the world around her that she forgot about anything else.
She looked to Andy but he wasn't looking at her; he stared straight ahead, at the door in front of Mack.
Mack raised his hand to the door, placing his palm on it and watching as the gray spread out in a circle. The door faded, simply disappeared from existence, revealing a room in front of them.
Skelly's mouth dropped open for what felt like the millionth time in the past few hours. She had never seen anything like it--only The Genesis could create something so complex. Humanity lost that ability five centuries before.
So that's what this was: something to do with The Genesis. Somehow Mack was involved with the coming Reckoning.
Skelly didn't know why, but she felt better about that. Perhaps because certain death was better than the unknown.
They walked through the open wall into the empty room. Empty except for a single chair in the middle and a man sitting on it. Their feet echoed across the floor, but the moment they stepped through the door, Skelly saw the coding had stopped. Cold concrete lay beneath them now, and it didn't react to their steps besides echoing its resentment.
"Charlie, my dear!" Mack shouted across the large room, his voice echoing off the walls. "Our two guests have decided to make your acquaintance. I'm sorry for being so late, but as you can imagine, it's been a trying day for young Skelly and Andy."
The man on the chair--Charlie apparently--stood up with a smile on his face. "If they came the first time, I would have thought we found the wrong people." He reached forward shaking Mack's hand and then bringing him in for a brief hug. As Mack pulled away, Skelly finally got a look at the man.
He was stunning. She could think of no other word to describe him. Dark, brown hair that he wore long, pulled behind his ears. His face was thin, his body looking hard underneath an obviously tailored suit; the suit itself came from a previous time, before The Genesis, but even in its ancient style, the open button shirt looked fabulous on him.
His eyes danced back and forth between her and her brother, and despite his body's glory (she hated herself for even thinking the word, but nothing else fit), once she found those eyes, she couldn't pull away.
"Skelly," he said, extending his hand. Like a trained dog trying to receive a treat, she gave him her hand and felt the gentle shake. She was too mesmerized to firm it up, but simply shook as if she was some dainty princess.
"Andy," Charlie said, turning his attention to her brother, breaking the connection between himself and Skelly. She watched as he gave Andy the same enthusiasm he had given her, the same sense of being genuinely interested in whatever they might think.
Andy didn't give his hand as Skelly had, though.
"How do you know our names?" her brother asked. Despite not shaking the man's hand, she knew he was fighting the same connection she felt.
"I've been watching you for a while. Both of you." Charlie looked back to Skelly and again she felt it.
"Don't look at her. You talk to me."
Charlie turned again, no trace of anger in him. "That's fine. No p
roblem at all. What did Mack say to you when he found you earlier?"
"Found me? You mean attacked me?"
"Poh-tay-toe, Puh-tah-toe. What did he say?"
Andy kept staring at the man, but Skelly knew he was trying to remember what exactly happened. "He said he wanted to talk about The Reckoning."
"That's right. Now Mr. Mack and I have a bet going on. I'm betting that you haven't told your family what your research revealed. He thinks you have. Would you mind laying to rest this little bet?"
Skelly looked to Andy, her mouth running before her mind could get it under control. "What?"
"Yes!" Charlie shouted. "When can I expect payment, Tom?" he said as he turned to the teacher. Mack was smiling and shaking his head.
"I'll get it to you by the end of the day."
"Bet your boots you will!" Charlie looked to Skelly. "You have to watch him. He's a notorious scoundrel." He glanced to the teacher. "Would you mind grabbing two more chairs? I think this palaver might take a little time and I'd hate to ask our guests to stand."
Mack walked off and Andy ended his silence. "What the hell is this? I haven't had an answer yet."
Skelly could tell his temper was about to fly out of control, but in this place, she didn't think the floor would repel him if he charged the beautiful man.
"Andy, I promise you I'm going to answer all of your questions as soon as Tom brings these chairs back to us. Can you give me just a few moments?"
"What's he talking about?" Skelly said, still not having taken her eyes from her brother. "What's he talking about with The Reckoning?"
"Nothing," Andy said. "I don't know what he means."
Skelly said nothing else, though anyone with eyes could see her brother was lying.
The chairs came and Mack sat one on either side of Charlie's.
"Shall we?" Charlie moved to the far right one, allowing her and Andy to sit next to each other. She waited on Andy to move, who stared at the man for a few seconds even after he took his seat.
Finally Andy went to the middle chair and Skelly took hers on the other side.
"Tell me what this is," Andy said.
"I know Tom told you that you can leave when this over, but I want to let you know that I fully expect you to leave. You would be crazy not to. You'd be crazy not to alert the authorities and have them hunt us down. I expect all of that to happen, okay?"