by David Beers
He.
Itched.
Unbidden tears filled Rhett’s eyes. Rebecca’s mouth opened slightly, almost orgasmic in the ecstasy that crossed her face.
“What are you doing?” Brinson asked.
“It’s …,” Rhett paused, not knowing how to finish the sentence.
You know. You know exactly how to finish it, his mind commanded of him.
“It’s him,” he whispered.
The ship banked left and Rhett swayed with it, barely paying his current predicament any attention. He looked at Christine, and yes, he saw it there too. She was still unconscious, but he saw color coming back to her.
“Who?” Brinson asked, her voice on the verge of outright panic.
A second passed with Rhett only feeling his blood itching, like it had done for so many years—
“DAMN IT!”
Rhett rocked forward, having to grab hold of the seat to keep from toppling into the front window.
He turned around and looked at Brinson, then at the world outside the transport. “What are you ….”
His voice trailed off as he came to understand. The transport hovered in the middle of open air; Brinson had branched out just a bit further than she should, coming outside the line of buildings. Five transports floated in front of them, forming a semicircle.
Rhett watched as one moved up, and another down, both keeping their noses pointed at their transport.
They could only go backward.
Rhett felt the itch growing almost painful, yet it felt good too—in a way that he could never explain in words. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he couldn’t bring himself to fully focus on the moment … Even though he might die in it.
“EITHER LET US BOARD OR DIE,” the voice boomed across the open expanse, Rhett unable to tell what transport actually projected it.
“What do you want to do?” Brinson asked without looking at him.
Rhett looked down at his hands, his eyes growing wide. Gray strands were dripping from them. He lifted his hands up closer to his face, and the gray static moved with him, though drooping down to his lap. “Do you see this?”
Brinson turned her head and opened her mouth to say something, but the words got stuck in her throat.
“What’s happening?” Manor said from the back.
Rhett turned to him, his hands displayed in front of his face. “You see this?”
“WHAT’S IT GOING TO BE?” the voice demanded from outside.
Rhett didn’t give a damn what they were asking him. His eyes found Rebecca’s, the only person in the transport who might understand what was happening—or at least understand as much as Rhett. This had something to do with David.
She shook her head slowly, but her eyes said she wasn’t saying no to his question. Because she was staring directly at his hands, watching the gray strands hanging.
Can you feel me?
Rhett’s mouth dropped open and tears fell from his eyes. There was no doubt—none at all—who was speaking. No nanotech. No other communication devices. Yet, the Prophet had spoken.
“Look,” Brinson, “I’m telling them to board. We’ll fight them hand to hand. I don’t know what else ….” She looked at Rhett for another second and then turned to the window in front of her.
“WE SURRENDER,” a mechanical voice boomed out across the expansion, Brinson’s nanotech directing it.
Rhett turned back around and fell into his seat, unable to comprehend what was happening in front of him. A smile was large across his face, and joyous tears falling down his cheeks.
Can you feel me? the question came again.
“Yes. David, yes … I can feel you!” Rhett shouted aloud, not knowing he was doing it, nor if David could even hear him.
You’re in danger?
Rhett nodded.
This is going to hurt, Rhett, but it’s necessary.
All Rhett could think was ouc—but he couldn’t finish the word before his consciousness was shoved aside.
Raylyn’s hands shook. The man next to her was dripping with the Black’s gray static and the transports in front of her were approaching.
We’ll fight hand to hand, she’d said, having never been in a fistfight in her life.
The Black was somehow inside her transport, and now she was about to lose her life.
“Yes. David, yes … I can feel you!” Scoble yelled.
Brinson turned to him, looking at the man both crying and smiling as though mad. The gray strands were creeping up his forearms, draping off of him like broken spiderwebs.
She glanced back to the front window for a moment. The three ships were nearly on top of them. Raylyn looked back at Scoble and he was …
No longer there.
His body, yes, but Raylyn could see his eyes, and they weren’t his.
He stared at the world with the eyes of the Black.
Gray static burned in them, his face slack, no more tears falling. His hands had dropped to his lap, the static strands moving further up his arms as if lazy spiders were weaving their webs.
“Open the top hatch,” Scoble said, but it wasn’t his voice speaking.
“David?” Hollowborne called from the back.
Scoble turned around with his eyes ablaze and stared at her for a moment before turning to Raylyn. His face was close, and she saw nothing but electric gray—endless and powerful.
“Open the top hatch,” he said again.
Open the hatch, she repeated to the ship’s nanotech.
The ceiling opened above, and Scoble wasted no time. He stepped over the middle console and into the back of the transport. Raylyn had never seen anyone move like him before. It wasn’t Scoble’s natural cadence. It wasn’t a Disciple’s elegance. He moved with purpose, like a soldier without conscience and knowing only one goal.
Scoble stopped beneath the hatch’s opening and looked up. His hands were at his sides, his eyes shining … and then Raylyn watched as he floated upward. One second his feet were planted, and the next they were in the air.
The webs dripping from his arms hung down after him, now almost covering his shoulders like electric ivy.
He moved past Raylyn’s field of vision and she whipped around to see the oncoming ships. Each one had stopped, clearly watching the gray-eyed man who was being slowly wrapped in a lax cocoon.
No one said a word. Raylyn’s breath was caught in her chest.
Green lasers erupted from the ships, the operators deciding that they wouldn’t board—that they would rather kill everyone inside than face the gray-eyed man.
The blast lasted for only a moment, barely enough to register. Raylyn couldn’t see Scoble, but she watched as massive gray webs shot across the three ships. The lasers simply split apart as the webs fell on them, fraying and turning to smoke. The gray static wrapped around the transports, hanging loosely off them just as it had Scoble, drooping down unevenly across each.
Raylyn looked down and saw the ship underneath was covered in the same gray light.
She didn’t bother looking up, knowing what she would see. Her eyes flashed to the front window, her body still as she held her breath. The ships were sparking, bright yellow flashes of fire breaking loose beneath the nets. The ships kept trying to blast at the nets, but each green explosion simply fragmented when it reached the gray light, giving birth to more flames.
The ship on the left started twirling in the air and simultaneously falling.
The other two lasted only seconds longer before doing the same.
ABOVE YOU! LOOK ABOVE YOU! Raylyn’s mind shouted at her, recognizing that the ship up there would shortly fall into hers.
Raylyn’s head jerked upward, but she saw that the transport was already moving across the open space. The gray net hanging off of it trailed lazily behind.
Once beyond Raylyn’s transport, it fell as well—all the while blasting useless lasers.
Raylyn watched as the sky emptied before her. Breath finally broke free from her chest.
She stared forward, her hands shaking and tears coming to her eyes.
You’re not dead, she thought. You’re not going to die.
Those two thoughts kept running through her head for a few moments, and then she heard something land behind her.
Raylyn looked back and saw those gray eyes staring at her, the same ones she’d seen at the compound. Any thoughts of surviving this vanished.
Two
Those inside the True Faith couldn’t witness what happened elsewhere in the world. Being underground, none of their faithful could see what the rest of the world did.
Anyone standing outside or looking at the sky saw it—not exactly at the same time, but close to it.
The Pope, Yule, saw it first on the tarp hanging in front of him, then again as he looked out his office’s left window.
He thought only one thing: Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.
The tarp in front of Yule had displayed the large building floating in the sky. Red lights lit up in a circle around it, powerful lasers warming up on the One Path’s ships. Yule’s hands pressed down on one another and he leaned across his desk. His jaw was flexed to the point of pain, though he didn’t feel it.
Daniel and Nicki were about to die, and Yule now had to watch it happen.
One instant, he watched red dots growing larger, and the next, Yule saw only gray static filling his screen.
There had been no time for change. No light exploding out of the building, no bulging walls as had been at the motel. There had only been red dots, and then nothing but static.
Yule didn’t understand; he stared on, his body tense, thinking it must be a technical malfunction.
“Trinant, I can’t see anything. What’s happening?” he said to the intercom.
He heard no response.
“Sister Claxton!” he screamed into the office. “Is there—”
He’d been prepared to finish the sentence with something wrong with our side? But his words simply ceased as his eyes focused outside the window.
Gray static filled the sky. There was no blue. There were no clouds. There was no atmosphere other than gray light.
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.
The Pope’s hands relaxed and his hunched shoulders fell back some. He stood slowly from his desk and walked across the room, stopping in front of the window.
A bolt of gray shot down from the sky, striking the ground somewhere outside of the Vatican. It looked like lightning at first, only the bolt didn’t die nor return to the sky. It remained firm, gray static now connecting the earth to the air.
Yule stared, unable to speak. If there were words to describe something so unfathomable, the Pope didn’t know them. Only that quote from Revelation, the one describing Christ’s return. He looked at something that he didn’t understand, that shouldn’t be possible, and thought Armageddon was perhaps upon the world.
Slowly, his knees creaking as he did, he knelt on the floor. He stared out the window for a few more seconds, then closed his eyes. The Pope began to pray.
“Nicki!”
The word repeated itself over and over, her name calling out repeatedly across the room in front of her. Nicki now recognized that if she wanted, she could have her father shout it forever, one right after another. Her name was currently echoing off the walls, it being shouted so many times that it sounded like it would never end.
“Nicki!”
“Nicki!” “Nicki!” “Nicki!”
She remained in that single moment, because she didn’t want anything to move forward. She had effectively stopped time … at least everywhere that her gray light touched. Nicki didn’t want to let time restart, because she didn’t want to see the results of what she’d done. Her father had been here—and she hadn’t known. She had reached inside her to that well of gray static and when she flung its contents on the world, she heard her father’s voice.
It’d been too late to stop.
“Nicki!” “Nicki!”
The sweetest sound, her father calling her name.
Nicki dropped to the floor, standing inside the box she had hung in for days and days. She could move freely now, and there was nothing to stop her. The last time she’d done this … it’d been different. Back in the motel. She hadn’t understood as much as she did now—though she didn’t know where such understanding came from. She was again walking in between raindrops, able to control even time.
She thought time was actually still moving forward, only she’d slowed it down drastically. If she went closer to her father and watched him, eventually she would see her gray outburst take its toll.
But it didn’t have to … not for a long time.
Nicki stepped outside of the box, moving by the fat man as she did. She crossed the floor, the thin man staring forward with his mouth open, a ripe vein bulging from his forehead.
Her father was behind the thin man, just having entered the long room. A gun was in his hand, and his mouth was open.
“Nicki!”
Her name echoed off the walls, though her father’s mouth had stopped shouting it. Nicki reached him, then looked to her left, seeing …
Him? she wondered, oddly calm in this gray light.
It was the man that had come to her house to kill her. He was holding a gun as well.
Nicki looked back to her father. She could see him changing, though almost imperceptibly. His jaw was moving, his body going forward. Eventually, the gray light would take him, just as it would everyone in this place.
Nicki reached up to her dad’s face and touched his cheek.
He could feel it—could see her—though he couldn’t react to any of it. Not at any detectable speed anyway.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”
Calm, but sad. Infinitely so.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I let this all go again. I only … I just knew I had to do something.”
She stretched on her tippy-toes and kissed her father’s cheek, holding it for a second.
When she bounced back to her heels, her eyes were full of tears making the gray static around her hazy.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said again, though not to her father.
The other voice was silent, whoever it had been.
“Now you leave me? After you set this loose?” she cried, louder now and turning around as if it might be hidden somewhere around the room.
Only the calls of her name answered her.
She silenced them and then stood in the stillness of her gray creation.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she said. “I don’t want it.”
Only silence responded, its answer forever and unchanging.
At the motel, she’d been able to pull it back, allowing everyone inside to live. She couldn’t now, though, and she knew it. It had gone too far; there had been too much fear inside her when it happened and now …
Nicki wrapped her arms around her father and leaned her head against his chest. She cried, her tears soaking his shirt. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m so sorry.”
The Prophet stood on a sandy beach and stared into the sky. The gray light above had been there for a long time, at least an hour, and now David gave it his full attention. He had been diverted at first, working as quickly as he could to ensure Rhett’s safety. He felt reborn into this world, barely understanding what was happening, and only knowing that he had to move quickly if his loved ones were to survive.
Now though, gray static hung above his actions. Gray static he did not create.
Out of everything in this world, it was that he didn’t understand the most.
Rhett and Christine were safe now, and David was left wondering about what was happening above.
A gray bol
t struck down in the ocean, far away from where the Prophet stood. He looked at it, expecting it to pull back up, but it remained plunged downward like an electric dagger.
David’s own eyes lit gray again.
He sucked in a deep breath as he connected with the power above.
He could feel her, just like he had before. David knew he had to go to her, but he didn’t want to. For the first time David could remember, he was scared. Not hesitant. Not cautious. But actually frightened. Because this was something he hadn’t dreamed possible. Looking upon the static filled sky had been one thing, but feeling it …
Unformed, be with me, he prayed.
David went to the young woman he was supposed to kill.
Nicki held onto her father, but she felt the change. It was a displacement, as if someone had stepped inside a box filled with water, one where there was no way for the water to spill out.
It only grew more dense.
Nicki stepped back, already knowing who was here before she saw him.
The dark man.
She pulled away from her father and looked behind him.
The dark man stood there, his outline perfectly black. His eyes were blazing gray and Nicki thought, That’s what I look like, isn’t it? My eyes are just as gray.
Nicki didn’t feel scared standing in front of him. For the first time, this man was on her territory, a gray that she created and controlled. She stepped further away from her father, presenting herself true to him.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The dark man remained quiet and unmoving. He only stared at her, his gray eyes wanting to blend in but unable to because of the blackness surrounding them.
“You can hear me. I know you can. What do you want?”
Still, nothing, and Nicki felt anger rising in her.
“All of you, you all want fucking something. And now look, look around you! Is this what you had in mind? Time stopped and everything around me about to be completely destroyed!” She choked up for a second, found her strength again, then screamed, “MY FUCKING FATHER!”
Silence and stillness from the dark man.
“Do you want to kill me or use me? Because that’s all any of you want. That’s all everyone but my father has ever wanted.”
