‘Sarah!’ Jason said, his voice echoing through the tree. ‘Come on! Who are you talking to?’
Sarah glanced towards the entrance and withdrew her hand. ‘I have to go,’ she said and looked back to the pool and the watcher who read her speech like words on a page. ‘But before I do, there’s one important thing you need to know ...’ She raised her hand, concentrated, and tiny tendrils of electricity branched across her fingertips. Sarah’s eyes grew bright as she studied the phenomenon. ‘... this life,’ – she looked up to hold the watcher’s gaze and grinned – ‘is as we make it.’
Epilogue - Chapter Two
Shocked by what they’d just seen, the reader, who was also the watcher, stared into Sarah’s eyes and glimpsed something within. At first, they thought it was a trick of the light, but as they looked deeper they saw the glow of a million, billion lights, and they were drawn irresistibly, inextricably, deeper and deeper into her eyes, travelling along the optic nerves and bursting out into a universe that spiralled and shone with dazzling brilliance. Amazed by the wondrous splendour, the watcher floated within this magnificence and basked in the love it found there, but as it soaked in the feelings of ultimate blissful peace, something made it turn. Something approached at speed, unseen. A great wave of terror and despair swept over the watcher: a cosmic scream from a distant land, a scream of fear, which couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a cry for help. Strangely, the watcher saw within this invisible force, voices among the many it knew to be its own and of those it loved. Distraught, the watcher added its voice to the disturbance, amplifying its power and pushing it to greater heights. And as its screams emanated into the eternal, it felt something stir, a distant movement that materialised as a presence by their side.
Who are you? thought the watcher, suddenly frightened.
I am you, said the being, its voice kind, yet full of infinite power.
You are me?
Of course, I am you and you are me. We are one.
You heard our call?
We did and I answered. The being grasped the watcher’s hand in theirs. Come, we must go.
Where?
You know where.
The watcher shivered in fear as the wave of terror continued to wash over them. I don’t want to die.
The being touched their face. We cannot die, dear one. We are immortal, you and I.
But I’m afraid.
I know, said the being. That’s why you must face it, or it will always be so.
But what can I do? What can I do against something so big and powerful?
Everything. The being smiled. We – YOU – can do anything – EVERYTHING!
Why should I believe you?
The being smiled, the effect lighting up galaxies. Because I am the truth and the way.
The watcher gazed into the being’s eyes in awe, and knew its strength, but as the being moved away, the watcher thought, wait!
The being paused, as the watcher gazed past them towards the darkness, and the terror and pain it knew lay beyond, a terror and pain it knew was also its own. If you are me, thought the watcher, confused, then who am I?
The being shone so bright the watcher averted their eyes, but as they did so they saw the radiance was their own.
Can you not see? said the being, its deep, reverberating voice a loving embrace. You are the light!
Again, the watcher couldn’t believe what they were seeing. A tear rolled down their cheek and they looked up in shock, their belief blazing star bright.
Come now, my child. The being carried the watcher along with them. Follow me.
The watcher and being became one and flew towards the source of dark. Faster and faster, deeper and deeper they sped, passing binary systems and interstellar nebulae, supernovas and black holes. The watcher shot through the ’verse of a billion, trillion stars, that blurred into streams of light, the speed increasing beyond the beyond, through the impossible and out of reality and into the next, until at last they plunged into a dark emptiness, a galactic centre. Light and time ceased, thought merged with dream, and dream became reality. In a universe the watcher knew as their own, a light appeared at the centre of a black hole. A light in the darkest dark and blackest black. The light built and grew, struggled and fought, expanded and shone, until it swirled around the event horizon, spinning round and round and round until it coalesced at the centre into a dome of pure energy and then shot out into the vacuum of space: an arrow of blazing light in the great void.
And it was this light that raced through time towards the edge of a spiral galaxy and a solar system comprising a single yellow star. Its destination: a blue gem of a planet, where a small spacecraft manoeuvred through the cold depths of space, collecting data on its never-ending survey.
NASA’s Deep Space Detection Array continued to relay its visual inputs back to Earth and a control centre located deep underground the Greenland landmass, in a base called USSB Discovery. Inside this hub of operations, a beeping sensor made a technician pause. Tony Jeffries held a tray of snacks and steaming coffees in both hands, and a packet of unopened sweets dangled from his mouth.
Jeffries glanced back at the screen, which continued to flash red, and his eyes widened.
‘Where are those drinks?!’ someone called out.
Jeffries mumbled a response and reluctantly left the room to rejoin his companions, who watched a large wallscreen. Having placed the tray on a table, he threw the sweets to a man who lounged on a sofa, with two other men from another department.
‘Bout time.’ Liam, Jeffries colleague, grabbed the sweets and tore them open.
‘BOOM!’ said his friend. He pointed at the wallscreen. ‘Did you see that?’ His eyes lit up with excitement. ‘They just blew up Robins Air Force Base!’
‘Look at the size of that crater,’ said the third man, through a mouthful of chips. ‘Oh, my God, it’s huge!’
Another explosion lit up the screen and the three men cheered, gasped and whooped.
Jeffries stared at the screen and then looked at his so-called friends, his expression one of distaste. ‘You know there are people at that base, don’t you? A housing development, children and schools?’
But his colleagues didn’t seem to hear him, as another missile strike took out a large hangar. The second man high-fived his friend. ‘Yeh, baby! Have some of that, you fuckers!’
‘Where’s the beers?’ Liam said.
He threw some chips at Jeffries, who scowled at him, and said, ‘Get them yourself.’
Jeffries stormed from the room, his heart pounding. Why is the GMRC murdering innocent civilians? Something big was happening on the surface, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good. A beeping noise drew his attention back to the monitor and he moved to the desk and tapped at a keyboard.
‘Jeffries,’ Liam said, following him into the room. ‘Where’s that damn beer?!’
Jeffries ignored him. He cancelled the alarm and brought up the relevant data packet delivered from the deep space array.
‘The shit’s hit the fan big time,’ Liam said, grabbing some beers from the cold store. ‘It’s a warzone up there.’
‘You shouldn’t be watching the military feed, it’s restricted.’
‘What they don’t know won’t hurt them.’ Liam made to leave and then paused. ‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know. It just came through.’ Jeffries flicked a couple of switches and an image appeared on a holographic display.
‘What is it?’ Liam said. He cracked open his beer and peered at the 3D footage.
Jeffries didn’t know, but it wasn’t normal.
‘Has anything like that ever happened before?’ Liam asked, sipping at his beer. ‘I didn’t know that was even possible.’
Jeffries mumbled a reply, but then suddenly remembered something and moved to a shelf to rummage through a series of old books. He found the one he wanted and flicked through, until he came to the correct page. He moved back to the console and dumped the book on the des
k. He pointed at a photograph. ‘There. The same thing was first seen back in 2014.’
‘What do you think it means?’ Liam said.
‘I don’t know. It’s like the universe swung into reverse.’ Jeffries stared at the image in the book, which matched the one now on screen. Something had escaped the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole, escaping the event horizon to re-enter normal space. And it was moving fast ... really fast. ‘There’s something else, here,’ Jeffries said.
‘And what’s that?’ Liam took another swig from his bottle.
‘The array captured another energy signature, as the light came out of the black hole.’
‘How can something escape a black hole, anyway? I thought they were a one-way ticket to nowhere.’
Jeffries wasn’t listening, as he’d seen something that made his heart race. ‘This is really weird.’
He put the video footage up on the holographic display. The lights in the room automatically dimmed and Jeffries and Liam watched the footage unfold before them. At first there was just darkness. Then came the light, swirling out of the black hole’s centre, where it grew into a coronal dome and then shot outwards like an arrow from a bow.
‘What is it?’ Liam glanced at his co-worker. ‘You’ve seen something else, haven’t you?’ He squinted at the hologram. ‘I can’t—’
‘Wait.’ Jeffries replayed the footage, his heart racing. ‘Did you see it?’
‘See what?’
Jeffries slowed the video down further. ‘What about now?’
‘No, I don’t—’
‘How about now?’ The footage slowed to a crawl and Jeffries hit pause, freezing the image.
Liam peered closer and then said, ‘Jesus, it looks like ... it looks like ...’
‘I know.’ Jeffries studied the image, which displayed a shinning white light surrounded by arcs of dazzling golden rays. At the centre of this radiance, embedded deep within, an indistinct figure could be seen, a figure that could be said – if you looked hard enough – to have a bipedal outline, with its arms extended in front of it, and if you looked closer still, you might, at a certain angle, and in a certain light, see something ... else.
Liam leaned closer to the image and said, ‘Are those wings?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jeffries gazed at it. ‘But it’s crazy, right?’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I have no idea, but we need to tell someone.’
‘Tell them what?’ Liam said. ‘No one will believe us. They’ll say we made it up, forged it or something. Or worse, they’ll think we’ve lost it and have us undergo a psychological.’
They stared at each other, before turning back to look at the image in stunned amazement. It seemed the world they’d always thought they’d known wasn’t what they thought it was after all, it was something far, far more mysterious than they could’ve ever have imagined.
And while these two men considered the implications of such a revelation, deep in the outer reaches of the solar system, the same light continued its advance towards Earth, its purpose unknown. But one thing was certain: whatever it was, it had been summoned – perhaps by the billions of souls who even now cried out in terror – and it had responded in the only way it knew how ...
... it had answered.
Epilogue - Chapter Three
In the distant outer reaches of the solar system, the giant Oort Cloud dwarfed the tiny orbits of the sun’s eternal satellites, the rocky planets ensconced at its heart: Mercury, the furnace; Venus, Goddess of love; Earth, the balance of Gaia; Mars, God of war; and on to the gas giants, Jupiter, the mighty king; Saturn, the titan of Tartarus; Uranus, prime God of heavenly sky; Neptune, God of cerulean seas; and through into the Kuiper belt, where Pluto, God of the underworld, lived in perpetual darkness. And beyond these goliaths, these gods and goddesses of celestial renown, from deep within the Oort Cloud itself, moved a colossal object unseen, the lost planet, Nibiru, the ferryman, Darkstar, God of death. And it was from this remote black sphere that a host of objects had been spawned, objects which travelled faster than a speeding bullet, their flat, jagged exteriors a stony façade, shaped like Neolithic arrowheads.
Slicing through the firmament of space and time, these huge craft glinted black, their glowing green sheen an accumulated cloak of bio-matter clinging to their hulls. But as these ships headed towards the inner reaches of the solar system at lightning speed, their velocity greater than the asteroids preceding them, something shot past that made them look like they were standing still. For a millisecond, golden rays illuminated the fleet of spacecraft in a flash of brilliance, before darkness returned, the passing radiance shrinking into the distance as it flew onwards at the speed of light, its destination known ... its destination: Earth.
Epilogue - Chapter Four
‘They’re coming again!’
Gunfire cracked out, the sound of automatic weapons reverberating around the cavernous chamber.
‘Brody,’ a soldier said. ‘What’s taking them so long?!’
‘I don’t know, but those things are attacking the communication link!’ Brody ejected a spent mag, slapped in another and cocked his rifle. ‘There’s too many of them!’
A frightening roar drowned out the weapons’ fire and Brody spun round to see a shimmering blue-green light heading straight for him. He depressed the trigger. Bullets flew, blood splattered and a second later his scream was cut short.
‘Brody! NO!!’ The other soldiers turned their guns on the shimmering creature in their midst, but seconds later they, too, fell silent.
Fifty yards away, a man stood at a military radio link. He twisted a small dial on the handset. ‘Professor,’ he said, ‘can you hear me? Professor?!’
Static played back over the speakers and the man waited for as long as he dared, and then spoke again. ‘Professor, if you can hear me, it’s Richard Goodwin. I’m not sure how long we can keep this channel open. We’re still alive and have made a home in Sanctuary Proper, but there’s something down here with us and it doesn’t like company. Professor, I don’t know if—’
A loud feedback signal whistled through the speakers and Goodwin winced in pain.
More gunfire erupted from all around him and a black-clad soldier grasped his wrist. ‘Director, we need to move, now!’
Goodwin nodded, just as the light of a Pharos appeared close by.
‘MOVE!’ The soldier raised his weapon and opened fire, and Goodwin dropped the handset and ran.
Jumping over a fissure, Goodwin landed on his hands and knees, rolled and leapt to his feet, his speed unimpeded. Behind him, the soldier’s dying screams curdled Goodwin’s blood and he picked up the pace.
Frantic, heart-stopping moments later, he burst out of the maze of fallen boulders and onto a stony shore. A river ran across in front of him and he glanced back and then waded out into deep waters.
Swept along by the current, Goodwin trod water, went under, bobbed to the surface and then went under again. Dragged along by the torrent, he fought for air and then felt something grasp his shirt collar.
Yanked backwards, he struggled and fought, before someone said, ‘Calm down! It’s me.’
Goodwin stared up into the black mask and glowing eyes of a Darklight helmet.
‘They’ve cut the hard lines to the USSB,’ Goodwin said. ‘The connection to the outside world is lost and the Pharos are everywhere!’
The armoured soldier’s helmet visor slid upwards and Commander Hilt gazed at him with steady eyes. ‘We always knew it was a long shot.’
‘I heard him,’ Goodwin said. ‘I heard the Professor’s voice.’ He hung his head. ‘We were so close.’
Hilt placed an armoured hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘There’s nothing else you could have done.’
‘Commander,’ a soldier said. ‘We’ve found another one!’
Hilt motioned to his unit. ‘Spread out, defence pattern beta nine.’
The men and women did as they were told a
nd Hilt and Goodwin waded through shallow waters to where the man had signalled to his commander.
‘Where is it?’ Hilt said.
The soldier pointed down into the water.
Goodwin looked at the transparent block, which lay submerged beneath the surface, the ten-foot-long structure resting on the riverbed.
Hilt bent down and searched for purchase. The Darklight leader then grasped the block, bunched his powerful muscles and lifted it to the surface. The Darklight soldier who was watching rushed in to help him, and then called in two others. Water splashed, orders were given and the large, jagged block of crystal was hauled out of the water and manhandled up onto the shore.
‘Oh, my God, is it her?’ Goodwin joined the soldiers at the water’s edge. ‘Is it her?!’
‘No.’ Hilt wiped away a layer of silt. ‘It’s a man.’
Goodwin’s expression dropped and he moved to the crystal and peered inside. The indistinct figure lay entombed within and he said, ‘I think I know who it is.’ He wiped away more of the silt. ‘It’s hard to tell, but it looks like him. I think it’s Sarah’s friend.’
A ferocious roar echoed through the chamber and Goodwin looked at Sanctuary’s ceiling and knew they hadn’t much time. Darkness approached and soon their fates would be sealed.
‘They’re coming!’ someone shouted.
‘Conserve your ammo!’ Hilt said, then turned to Goodwin. ‘They really don’t want us finding these crystals.’
‘I think it’s who’s in them that’s bothering them.’ Sporadic gunfire made Goodwin’s stomach clench. ‘There’s no backup coming, is there?’ he said, fearing the worst.
Ancient Origins: Books 4 - 6 (Ancient Origins Boxset Book 2) Page 150