The Tellurian Threat: A Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Thriller (The Tellurian Archives Book 1)

by Debashish Das

  He was massaging his calf, hoping the cramp would go away, when he heard a whooshing noise. Like that of a door opening. Instinctively, he turned toward the door. But before he could take off the VR headset, something crashed into him. Damian hit the ground with a thud and smacked the back of his head on the floor. He cried out in pain. The headset had shielded the back of his head, but it still hurt like hell. He had difficulty breathing and realized there was a heavy weight on his chest.

  “You bastard!”

  Someone ripped the headset off his head, and he found himself staring at a face etched with anger. It took him a few moments to recognize Kyle. He coughed and immediately felt a sharp pain in his chest. Broken ribs. “I’d appr… appreciate it if you… could get off of me,” he managed to wheeze out.

  “Let him up, Kyle,” a voice said from behind him. “He can’t do anything now.”

  It sounded like Rohan, but he’d never heard such coldness in his voice. Kyle let go of his collar and was about to let him up when Rohan spoke again. “But please pat him down. I’m sure he has some kind of a weapon on him.”

  Kyle shoved him back to the ground and felt around in his pockets. He knew he didn’t have enough leverage to reach for and use the stun gun. So he let Kyle take it off him, along with the hypodermic syringes. Only then did Kyle let him up.

  Damian shook his head and worked himself into a sitting position. He gripped his right leg; the cramp seemed to have spread there. Or maybe he’d just fallen on it, hard.

  “What have you done to him, Damian?” Rohan asked, sounding distraught.

  It took him a moment to realize what he was talking about. He shifted around to face Rohan, who was kneeling beside the unconscious form of the guy he’d taken out.

  “He’s not dead, is he?” Kyle asked, sounding alarmed.

  “It’s nothing,” Damian said. “He’s just unconscious. He walked in on me, so I had to take care of him. He will wake up in a few hours with a terrible headache. Nothing life threatening, I assure you.”

  “A few hours?” Rohan asked incredulously. “And what would have happened to him if the magma broke through Waylain’s outer shell? You were just going to leave him here to die?”

  Damian laughed, shaking his head at the same time. “You still don’t believe I can do this, do you? Look around you, Rohan. This is real, this is happening. Everything is under control; it’s all going according to the plan. I’ve taken care of it. The magma will never breach the outer shell. I need Waylain’s structure intact for this to work.”

  Kyle walked over to the unconscious guy and felt for a pulse. He looked up at Rohan and said, “We need to get him out of here.”

  Rohan nodded. “I’m on it. Keep an eye on him,” he said, nodding in Damian’s direction.

  Damian smiled. “While you’re at it, let’s all go out to the city level. It will be a wonderful spectacle to see water falling from the proverbial sky.

  “I knew you and Patrick would try to stop me. That’s why I set things up so you can’t interfere. In fact, it’s best to let my plan run its course. With the speed the magma is rising, there’s not enough time to change anything. A small mistake on your part could result in a disaster. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  Rohan flicked a couple of switches, and the far wall turned into a screen. The view from the VR headset was now being projected on the wall-screen. With his back toward him, Rohan replied, “If I know you well, and I believe I do, you still have the programs running here. You would want to have the back door access to Al and the control systems, just in case. Ah, here it is.”

  “Uh uh. I wouldn’t move if I was you.” Kyle’s threatened. “At this point, I don’t even need an excuse.”

  He realized he was crouched, ready to launch himself at Rohan. When he saw Kyle pointing the stun-gun straight at him, he raised his hands and sat back down. “Like I said, it’s too late to do anything. I’m telling you, if you want Waylain to survive, do not interfere.”

  Rohan ignored him and was cycling through the various windows he’d opened. Damian glanced at the countdown timer on the screen.

  1:59:34

  That brought a smile to his face again. Rohan was too careful to rush into anything. He would take his own sweet time examining the code, and by then, it would be too late. The magma wasn’t going to wait on anyone’s leisure.

  “I’d ask you how you got access to the stealth drillers, but I don’t think you’ll answer. You seriously thought that setting off explosives inside the magma pocket would work?” Rohan asked.

  “There were only two options,” Damian replied. “I would have loved to use the geo-thermal plant for its intended purpose. Divert a few hundred gallons there, turn it into vapor, seed it, and let it back out into the upper level of Waylain. But I couldn’t touch Waylain’s water reservoir without alerting you or Patrick. So I had to get creative and bring the heat source to the water reservoir.

  “But it worked, didn’t it? You guys had absolutely no idea what was happening, and now the magma is almost here. Is it just me, or do you feel like it’s getting hot, too?” Damian said laughing.

  Rohan still didn’t turn around to face him. Instead, he was busy typing on the virtual keyboard. Suddenly, he said, “You got all of that?”

  A moment later, Patrick’s face appeared on the wall-screen, dripping with cold fury. He nodded and said, “I’m going to find whoever was responsible for letting this maniac take control of those stealth drillers and make them wish they’d never been born.”

  Damian burst out laughing. It was never a good idea to provoke Patrick, but this was hilarious. He had never seen Patrick this angry, and the fact that he had no control over what was happening was just the cherry on top.

  Patrick turned his icy gaze on him. “You, I want to keep alive, even though I want to reach down your throat and pull out your spine. But that would be too gentle an end. You will watch as I crush your dreams before your eyes. Whatever you have started today ends today. There is nothing beyond it for you. All your plans and desires for mankind’s future will turn to dust as you sit there watching helplessly. I will make you repent every moment of your miserable little life.”

  Damian grinned. “It seems you have a very short memory, Patrick. You threatened me once, and here we are. Your life’s biggest accomplishment has been snatched away from you. You are being forced to abandon it to its fate. Waylain is now mine to do with as I please. Are you sure you want to threaten me again?

  “But don’t worry. Waylain is in safe hands. Well, actually my hands, as safe as they can be. You just used it as an excuse to create a society where you could be in control. You promised people a safe haven, and they rushed to it. But they never realized that it was a hell-hole, a purgatory for the entire human race. People like you have denied mankind true salvation, a future where we don’t have to bury our heads in the sand and hide from reality. The human race was born to walk this planet and spread its branches across the universe.

  “This is bigger than you and me and everyone else alive today. All I have done is unblock the flow of inevitability. The future is coming, whether you like it or not. For new life to flourish, the old must be pruned away. Waylain was the crowning glory of the past era, but I have turned it into a seed for the coming future. Where you see death and destruction, I see rebirth and a renewed hope. Your only choice is to stand by me and help shape the future, or stand in my way and get swept away by the storms of change.”

  Chapter 22

  Kyle wanted to pull the trigger, but couldn’t decide if it was his anger or his pity that urged him to do it.

  Damian was still on the floor, sitting right where he had tackled him. Looking at him, Kyle couldn’t help but take pity. His dirty clothes hung from his emaciated frame. They were the same clothes Kyle had seen him wearing the last time they’d met. He looked pale and bedraggled, his dry, lifeless hair making him look older than his age, especially now that he could see the bald patch in the center.
But his face portrayed a different picture.

  The dark circles on his face framed a pair of blood-shot eyes, but they shined with manic energy. His lips were twisted in a sardonic smile as if he found all this amusing. Like what was going to happen was preordained, and nothing could stop the magma from crashing into Waylain.

  Kyle felt out of place, like he was never meant to be here. He didn’t know how much he could contribute, but he knew for sure that he wasn’t going to run away as long as there was hope.

  “… may be possible. I could try to manually divert the flow…”

  “And where would you divert it to? Your friendly neighborhood magma disposal depot?” Patrick replied, sarcastically. “The input and output conduits; both are connected to the reservoir. And even if there was a place we could divert the flow to, the control valves would fail, miserably. They were designed for water, not magma.”

  The cracks are starting to show, Kyle thought to himself. Patrick had gone from calm to angry and now to sarcasm. Rohan, who was usually level-headed and quiet, had been talking constantly, as if he could talk his way into a solution. This is not looking good, he thought. How did we end up here? How the hell did I get mixed up in all this? I should have been on one of those evac vehicles. It seemed to Kyle that the ignorance and confusion that the people on the surface would be feeling was much better than being stuck here, helpless, knowing what was coming.

  “Can’t we just stop the magma from entering the plant?” Rohan asked. “Just cave in the tunnel? The weight of the soil and stone might be enough to block the flow.”

  Damian surprised everyone with a bark of laughter. “You want to throw stones at an oncoming torrent of molten rock! Please, do set up a few cameras so I can enjoy the show.”

  Rohan turned around with a confused look. “What have you done, Damian? This is not you. You wanted to save the world, not destroy it. There’s still time, help us save the people and prevent this destruction.”

  “You are going about it the wrong way then. Stop trying to interfere and let it run its course. The citizens of Waylain are on the surface, no one is going to die. And the only thing that gets destroyed is the geo-thermal plant, which had been lying abandoned for years. Waylain will survive. Don’t do anything stupid now, or all hell will break loose.”

  “Don’t listen to the fucking maniac, Rohan,” Patrick cut across sharply. “We have to keep the magma as far away from the water reservoir as possible…”

  “You’ve lost, Patrick,” Damian spat back. “You only care about protecting your precious fucking Waylain. You don’t give a shit about the people or the environment or this planet. I knew you would hate not being able to play God in your little hidey-hole. That is why I set it all up so you wouldn’t be able to do shit. All you can do is watch, just like the rest of us.”

  There was murder in Patrick’s eyes, but Damian seemed to take perverse pleasure in that. They were running out of time, and Kyle could feel everyone inching closer to the edge, including himself. He knew he had played a key role in allowing Damian to run amok. But just waiting for the disaster to strike, felt even worse. We are about to be destroyed in a rushing torrent of magma! How the hell does one stop magma?

  Damian might be completely insane, but Kyle couldn’t help but appreciate what he had done. He had successfully disassembled decades of hard work and disrupted an entire society. No matter what Patrick or Rohan said, he felt that Damian would never unleash mindless destruction. He was insane, yes, but still careful and methodical. For fuck’s sake, he was able to tap into and control the flow of magma. Who the hell would have thought that was even possible?

  But the magma had to be stopped or diverted. He shuddered to think what would happen when it broke into Waylain’s water reservoir. Rohan had shown him the videos of magma encountering cold water. The smoke and the ash would cut out the sun for weeks. The explosion itself would send a shockwave across hundreds of miles…

  Suddenly, Kyle realized there might be a way to avert disaster, after all. He glanced at the countdown timer on the wall-screen.

  1:27:58

  “We could use explosives,” Kyle whispered.

  His voice seemed to almost echo around the silent room.

  He felt all eyes turned on him. “Just like he did, we could use explosives to clear the way for the magma, give it a new channel to flow into so it bypasses Waylain completely.”

  “Give it a new channel to where?” Patrick asked.

  “To the surface…”

  He left the rest unsaid. He didn’t even want to think about the consequences of what would happen if he was wrong. But it was better than the alternative, wasn’t it?

  Rohan shook his head. “It’s the same thing, isn’t it? If rocks and soil can’t block the magma, I doubt a few explosives will cause it to change direction.”

  “That’s it!” Patrick exclaimed, excitedly. “It could work. We don’t need to block, or even divert it. All we need to do is clear the path and let it carry on in the direction it’s going.”

  Rohan looked at Kyle, then at Patrick. “You’re kidding! Are you seriously going to set off explosives this close to Waylain, while all this shit is going on?”

  Rohan’s voice had climbed in pitch by the last sentence. And he never cursed. Kyle had been relying on him to fill in the details as he had no idea how exactly to make it happen. But it seemed he wasn’t convinced.

  “I’ll take my chances against explosives,” Patrick said, “rather than place my bets on Waylain’s outer shell holding out against an unstoppable torrent of magma. Think about it, Rohan. If we are able to open up a channel to the surface, wider than the inlet and outlet channels…”

  “The path of least resistance,” Rohan said, eyes closed and breathing deeply. “But there are people on the surface, waiting for evacuation.”

  That was the thing that Kyle was afraid of. If they didn’t time everything right, thousands of people would meet a gruesome end. It would be like getting caught in a volcanic eruption.

  “We still have about 90 minutes left,” Patrick said, glancing at the countdown timer. “I’ll make sure everyone is on the evac vehicles by then. But we don’t have time to lose; we need to set all of it up in a hurry.”

  “We’ll use the mining bots,” Rohan said, sounding like he was not panicking anymore. “They have directional explosives. If we align them around the geo-thermal plant’s periphery correctly, and time the explosions, we can create a negative pressure field. That should draw the magma upward and away from Waylain, although, it will throw up tons of debris onto the surface.”

  “Considering the volcanic eruption that will follow, the debris will seem like confetti. I wouldn’t worry about that,” Patrick said. “I’ve handed over the mining operations control to you. How long will it take till the bots are in position?”

  “Not long. I’ll start positioning them around the plant immediately, then fine tune their exact location as per the calculations. It shouldn’t take more than an hour,” Rohan replied.

  Beneath all their bravado, Kyle could tell they were as nervous as he was. This was their last desperate attempt to cling to a sense of control and power. Kyle knew that when nature’s fury broke free, they would be like dust carried upon the wind. Or in this case, ash.

  His eyes were glued to the part of the wall-screen where the video feed still showed the people waiting for evacuation. Even without the audio, Kyle could make out the tension on the surface. He could almost hear the sound of thousands upon thousands of voices echoing. The murmurs, the cries, and the shouts, all mixed to form a strange cacophony that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

  Kyle suddenly felt something hit him in the small of his back. He cried out, more from surprise than pain. Before he could turn around, he felt someone grab him from behind, and they both tumbled to the floor. After a few moments of rolling around, Kyle managed to free himself. But by the time he stood up, he realized that Damian had managed to wre
stle the stun gun away from him. In their eagerness to put their plan into action they had failed to keep an eye on Damian. Kyle realized, too late, that he should have kept an eye on him instead of letting his emotions run away with him.

  Damian stood a few feet away, panting from their struggle, and the stun gun pointed at Kyle. “Easy now. Back away slowly. No one has to get hurt.”

  Kyle didn’t move. He was close enough for a flying tackle. And Damian’s hands were trembling, his aim would be off. He braced himself, but Damian seemed to sense his intention.

  “Uh uh,” Damian said, taking aim at Rohan instead. “He’s the only one here who can disrupt my plans. Without him, no one can do shit. I won’t let you ruin all this. I’ve waited my whole life; I can’t let anybody interfere with it. I’m sorry, Rohan. I have to do this.”

  Kyle froze in his tracks. Now that Rohan was in the cross hair, he had to be a little more careful.

  “You’ve got nothing, Damian. Let it go,” Patrick said, his voice sounding perfectly calm. “Even if Rohan goes down, I can take over. You made your moves, and you’ve lost.”

  “It’s alright, Patrick,” Rohan spoke up. “He’s not going to be able to do anything.” He turned to Damian and added, “Have you lost feeling in just one hand or both?”

  Kyle looked carefully at Damian. His hands were trembling worse than before. Something in his eyes told Kyle that he desperately wanted to pull the trigger, but couldn’t. Something was stopping him.

  “Fuck!” Damian roared with rage, just before collapsing on the ground.

  Kyle watched his twitching body in revulsion. It seemed like he was having a fit, a terrible one at that. His limbs were jerking around erratically, his eyes had rolled up into his head, and spittle was flowing down the corner of his mouth. It seemed Damian had finally lost control of everything.

  “He always had a propensity for these neurotic fits,” Rohan said, answering the unasked question. “They usually started as a trembling in his limbs and leave him helpless for several minutes afterward. I suspect with the stress he’s been under, and without food and care, the fits would have gotten worse.”