by Peter Darley
“Oh, well, in that case, come on in.”
Crane stepped into the humble abode with a gracious smile.
“So you’re not here to arrest me. How come?”
“I’m not in law-enforcement. I’m in intelligence. Why would you think I wanted to arrest you?”
Woody cringed. “For going on TV with my story.”
“It was a stupid thing to do, Mr. Schuster. Do you have any idea how much danger you’ve put yourself in? You were damn lucky to get out of that studio alive.”
“I know. I was there when they almost got Heather. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. Besides, my friend needed me. It got him a job.”
“What?” Jed looked up as a tall, thin man and a gothic woman with white skin and black lipstick entered the living room.
“It was me,” the thin man said. “I’m Phil Cole. We timed Woody’s appearance on Channel 7 to coincide with a meeting I had with Simon Dredo, the head honcho over at Cosmic Comics.”
Crane’s heart sank with despondency. “Are you out of your mind? You risked this kid’s life just to get in with a goddamn comic company?”
Phil looked away sheepishly. It was clear he had no justification for their reckless behavior.
“This is where it ends,” Crane said. “B.J. put you up to this Firedrake thing, and from now on, you answer to me. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.
“As unorthodox as this is, you guys are tentative operatives of the US government, and you are all on probation right now.” Crane waited for their gasps to abate before speaking again. “Now, I want you to show me what you’ve managed to come up with so far.”
“I’ll go check on the computer,” the gothic girl said. “By the way, I’m Sharon.”
“It’s a pleasure,” Crane said with a hint of intolerant iciness. He turned back to Woody and Phil. “I’m serious. You are now under my watch. No more wise-guy stunts, otherwise I’ll have you put away for your own protection.”
“Yes, sir.”
Crane sat down on the frayed, living room sofa. “I’ve had a long trip, Mr. Schuster. Make a pot of coffee. We have a lot to discuss.”
“You bet.”
Minutes passed. Woody came back and handed the director a mug of coffee. Crane glanced at it for a moment, wondering if it was safe to drink. “That’s just fine. So, tell me, what has this internet campaign of yours managed to uncover?”
“With all due respect, sir, it’s only been a couple of days. We realize most of the responses are cranks, but we check each one. Anything that comes through that looks even remotely genuine, we’ll let B.J. know. We have his Z-Watch number.”
“Not any more. I’ll give you mine.”
Concern showed in Woody’s eyes. “Why can’t I contact B.J.? Where is he?”
“Never mind where B.J. is. After what you pulled on Channel 7, everything I tell you will be on a strictly need-to-know basis. Understood?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Director?”
Crane looked up and saw Sharon was breathless. “What is it?”
“I think you should come and take a look at this. A message just came through, and I don’t think it’s a prank. I think we’ve got an insider from C.O.T.”
Crane put his coffee down and stood abruptly. “Show me.”
He followed Sharon into the kitchen, barely conscious of Woody and Phil behind him.
Sharon pointed to the Z-Pad, hovered her hand over the screen, and moved the text back to the crucial point.
Crane leaned forward and studied the message:
My name is Amy Fairchild. The truth of this message can be confirmed by the government agency, EDID. I contacted Agent Drake on March 31st with information about the C.O.T. cult. I was taken in by them two years ago . . .
Crane scanned the message hungrily. He had no doubt this was the woman who’d contacted B.J. The date she’d quoted was perfectly accurate. Who else could’ve known that?
But as he read more, all of the answers unfolded. His heart pounded with the horror of what he was learning. Oh, my God. No. It can’t be.
After reaching the end of the message, he looked at his Z-Watch and made a call with a sense of urgency he’d never known. “This is Director Jed Crane with EDID. Patch me through to the president, immediately.”
Forty-Four
Above and Beyond
The cell door opened. B.J. looked away instinctively. Even the slight shard of light was too much for his un-acclimatized eyes.
“We have to hurry.”
He squinted and glanced up. She was young, perhaps eighteen, wearing a brown robe with a hood. A few strands of auburn hair were visible underneath. She looked downward regretfully. “Who are you?” he said.
“I’m Amy. Amy Fairchild. We’ve spoken before. I called you on your Z-Watch a week ago.”
“That was you?” As his vision adjusted, he noticed her holding up a large, blue blanket.
“Put this on,” she said. “You must be very cold. This is what they do to those who disobey. They’re trying to break you.”
He took the blanket. “Thank you. I kinda got that idea.”
She gestured to his hand. “Your knuckles are bleeding?”
“You should see the other guy.”
“What?”
“Never mind. If you’re one of them, why are you helping me?”
“Because it’s right. I know where your armor is. I’ll take you to it, and then I’ll show you the way out. But you have to promise you’ll take me with you.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal, Amy.”
With the blanket wrapped around him, he followed her out into a bare, courtroom-sized opening with a metallic stairwell in the far right corner. “What is this place?”
“Come on. This way,” she said, and headed up the stairwell.
“So who are you, Amy? How did you get caught up in all this?”
“I’ve been with them for two years. I was living on the streets of Chicago after my parents kicked me out. The pastor found me and promised me a new life. He said God had a plan for me, and that I was one of the elect. I was desperate to believe him and went along with it.”
“Who’s the pastor?”
She reached the door at the top of the stairwell and placed her finger over his lips. “Sshh. They’ll hear you.”
He stepped out with her into an advanced-looking, technological corridor. A spattering of fluorescent lights lined the ceiling and a high-quality, dark carpet covered the floor. The corridor seemed to be constructed in sections with a raised, blue, neon step at each interval. Along the sides of the intervals were blinking sensor panels, which caused his nerves to go into overdrive. “If we walk through those things, won’t it set off an alarm?”
“No. They’re just oxygen and temperature monitors.”
What the hell is this place? Some kind of underground research or defense base?
A commanding voice coming from somewhere up ahead grew louder. It seemed to have an echoed quality, as though it was being spoken in an arena.
“We have to get down on our hands and knees, or they’ll see us,” Amy said.
“Whatever you say.”
They crawled along the corridor until they were virtually upon the source of the speech. B.J. couldn’t resist peeking over a balcony to get a better look.
“Be careful,” Amy said in a hushed whisper.
B.J. backed up and braced himself against the wall. He turned his head in order to see with little chance of being seen.
Below, over a hundred congregants, all wearing the customary robes and hoods, sat in a semi-circular arrangement of seats.
B.J.’s gaze lingered on the one delivering the sermon—the man with the scar and the missing eye. A metallic brace on his nose and two blackened, swollen eyes, revealed the extent of the damage a punch from an armor-clad fist could cause. “Who is that guy?”
“It’s Pastor Byron,” she said.
“Why aren
’t you with them? Won’t they be looking for you?”
“I’ve been temporarily shunned. I’m on probation so I can’t attend the gatherings.”
“Why have you been shunned?”
“I expressed an opinion. Free thought is considered a serious sin. Lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs, three-five.”
Mind control. B.J. turned back to the sermon in an attempt to assess the mentality he was dealing with.
“We have lost a number of our brethren, but they will rise again,” Byron said with booming resonance. “I am still among you by the grace of The Prophet. He called me back home when I was in Los Angeles, while the others went to their deaths. He proclaimed my mission was not over, that I am the mouthpiece of the Lord. You must heed my words.”
“We heed you. We heed you,” the congregation chorused.
B.J. shook his head in astonishment. What the hell kind of delusion is this?
“The Great Tribulation is almost at an end. The evil will be vanquished forever. We, the elect, will be all that remains, closer to God than any earthly man has ever been. We have opened the Seventh Seal. We have taken The Censer, filled with fire from the altar, and hurled it to the earth. We have seen its power, its rolls of thunder, its rumblings and flashes of lightning, and the devastation of its earthquakes. Every island will flee, and no mountain will be found. Only we, the Children of Tomorrow, will be spared the final wrath.”
Awareness came to B.J. akin to a light bulb coming on inside his head. All this time they’d tried desperately to figure out what it meant, but to no avail. C.O.T.—Children of Tomorrow.
“Come on,” Amy whispered. “We’re losing time.”
Realizing he’d seen enough to know that reasoning with these clowns wasn’t going to be an option, he concurred. Together, they crept along the edge of the balcony.
Once they were in the clear, they stood upright again and ran to the end of the corridor. After turning to the left, B.J. noticed flashes of light and a rumbling hum coming from a side room. Intrigued, he ran toward it.
What he saw before him was almost beyond belief. Within a huge arena, a power ball the size of a small house rotated in mid-air. It seemed to be covered with thousands of transistors, emitting constant showers of electrical arcs. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s The Censer,” she said.
“The Censer? You mean what that asshole was talking about down there? ‘Its rumblings and flashes of lightning’?”
“He was kinda quoting from the Book of Revelation, but yes. They call it The Censer because it creates the prophesized devastation.”
B.J. gazed at the insidious apparatus with disgust. This must’ve been what was creating the E.L.F. waves. “But if it can generate that much power, how is it nobody has ever been able to detect it?”
“If you look around the corners of the chamber, you’ll see a number of TV-sized, silver screens.”
“I see them. What are they?”
“Cloaking devices. State-of-the-art. This facility is covered in them. No satellite or radar technology could ever detect this place.”
He touched her shoulder reassuringly. “Amy, I can’t leave here until I’ve destroyed that thing. Billions of innocent lives will be lost unless I do.”
“Not dressed in boxer shorts and a blanket you won’t. You need your armor, so stop wasting time and let me take you to it.”
“You got it.”
She led him through two further corridors until they arrived at another side chamber. She tapped in an entrance code. “This is the one.”
The door opened. B.J. smiled at the sight of the INT-Nine mounted on a mannequin within a small, neon-lit storage facility. “How did you know the door code?”
“I’ve watched the elders very closely. All right, Interceptor. Do your stuff.”
He threw the blanket off and moved briskly toward the armor. Amy followed him and closed the door.
Frantically, he began to don the armor. “So tell me, Amy. How did you get my Z-Watch number?”
“I caught sight of it on a list in The Prophet’s office. When he wasn’t looking, I wrote it down. The records showed a call to you had been made from the main communications center, but they never discovered it was me. If they had, I probably would’ve been executed.”
He stopped in his tracks for a moment, astounded by the young woman’s courage. She’d risked her life just for the chance to talk to him. It was no wonder she’d been so desperate to get off the line.
“After that,” she said, “The Prophet blocked all communications to official contact points. He has a database of every Z-Watch, email, and contact number for every single intelligence, law-enforcement, and presidential employee. It’s thousands of addresses and numbers.”
B.J. frowned. Nothing about that made any sense. “How could he have access to all that?”
“It doesn’t matter. I discovered Firedrake online. They weren’t official, so I sent them a message detailing everything.”
A shrewd smile crept from the corners of his mouth. “You sent a message to Woody?”
“I never got his name.” Amy stepped forward, clearly anxious as he attached the breastplate. “Are you nearly done?”
“I just need to do the gloves and the helmet. Hold on.”
Amy opened the door ajar and poked her head out. “I hear them. Hurry up. I think the gathering has finished.”
He hurried over to her with the helmet under his arm. “Then let’s get out of here. I can put this on while we’re moving.”
“OK.”
They stepped out into the corridor. Immediately, a shadow fell across their path. Amy was closer to the side chamber. B.J. was closer to another corridor opposite. He pointed for her to hide in the room and darted into the adjacent corridor.
With his back braced against the wall, he kept his eye on the side room’s door. Dammit, Amy. We were so close.
He held his breath as a parade of robes and hoods passed the inlet, their gazes focused forward. None of them were aware of him.
Once they’d passed, he glanced to his right and saw a window with the stars of the night sky beyond. Maybe he could get an idea of where he was. There would have to be a landmark, a familiar terrain, even a species of fauna—something that would indicate a likely location.
Desperately, he ran to the window and rested his armored hands against the glass. He looked down, but all he could see were more stars. It didn’t make any sense.
He caught something out of the corner of his eye and froze. A sense of horror, like someone had just walked over his grave, took hold of him.
Slowly, with overwhelming dread, he turned his head to the right. It wasn’t the night sky he was looking at. It was more than his mind could assimilate.
The Planet Earth was below him.
Forty-Five
Cronus
OK, get a grip, B.J. It’s one of the space stations. There has to be a shuttle out of here.
Despite his sense of shock, a huge piece of the puzzle had just been handed to him. Why had nobody been able to trace C.O.T.? Why could nobody detect the source of the E.L.F. waves? Now, it was obvious. Everything they were looking for wasn’t even on earth.
He ran back, remembering Amy was still inside the store room.
After looking both ways to ensure it was clear, he opened the door.
“Please don’t let them hurt me,” Amy said. She was on the verge of tears.
He reached out his hand to her. “It’s all right. I’ll keep you safe, but I need your help. There has to be a way out of here.”
“There is. There are three shuttle craft down in the arrival bay.”
“Do you know how to fly them?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. They’ve had me fly them down to the surface on some of their land operations.”
B.J. put his helmet on and noticed the digital readouts and visuals were normal again. “Like when they went down and killed my friend, Tito? And when they spied on me f
rom a rooftop in L.A.?”
“I never knew what they were doing down there. They forced me to stay in the craft, and I was forbidden from asking questions.”
“Figures. But what is this place?”
“It’s what used to be the Cronus Space Station,” she said.
“The scientific research station they abandoned in thirty-five?”
“Yes. The Prophet recruited a number of followers within the scientific community. Technicians. They provided the cloaking generators, and developed the technology for The Censer. They also customized three shuttle transports for accelerated flight.”
Questions swirled in B.J.’s mind. Who could have had that kind of influence? The money required to pull something off like this would’ve been enormous—unless this ‘Prophet’ character had close ties to the Space Program and numerous other scientific bodies. But scientists were the most unlikely to be taken in by this kind of bullshit.
He realized he was wasting time. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She clung to him as they exited the room and moved back along the passageways. “Why are we going this way?” she said.
“I have to destroy that Censer thing. I can’t leave here until I have.”
“But how? It generates E.L.F. waves strong enough to wipe out entire cities. How will your armor withstand getting anywhere near it?”
He pondered her words and a thought came to him. On the day he rescued Heather from the New York tragedy, he’d accidently pushed a wrong button.
He looked down at his thighs and touched a sensor on his hip plate. A pistol shot out of a compartment on his thigh. He touched the same sensor on the opposite hip plate, and the other pistol sprung out. He took the guns out, and the compartments closed up again.
He glanced at the weapons. Both appeared to be highly sophisticated and beautifully designed in chromium silver with strange, blue lenses protruding from the muzzles. He stood before her brandishing the two pistols by his side. “Let’s see what these things do.”
They continued along the corridor and stopped at The Censer chamber. He handed one of the pistols to Amy. “Just hold on to that for a second.”