by David Beers
The static ate at the shields, the armor, the headgear. It spread across and then sliced through whatever barriers separated it from the flesh beneath.
Screams ripped through the sky, creating such a cacophony that it even drowned out the ClearViews’ constant firing.
The transport sped up and David understood it was coming for him now, that this game was over. They saw their people dying and knew that whatever last weapon they had, it must now be used.
David felt the transport pass within his grasp and he took hold of it, squeezing hard enough to make the metal creak inside. He brought it down to him, past the larger transports, past the men trying to fight off the endless spiderwebs. He carried the ship to his platform.
Its door opened.
David didn’t reach inside for anyone. He would let them come as they were ready. Gray webs hung through the air, leaving no room for anyone to walk, but David cleared a path between him and the transport door. He didn’t know if the girl was still here watching him. He no longer cared. It was these people he’d been born to destroy. Them and everyone like them. Those that killed Abby and Veritros, and had done their best to keep the Unformed from recognizing Its place in this universe.
And now they were here, ready to kill him.
A man stepped from the transport.
David looked at him, seeing him clearly. The man held no fear despite the maze of electrical webs around him, the men dying across the platform—their bodies being sliced to pieces, their voices drowning in their own blood.
The man appeared to see none of it.
He’s calm. Perhaps calmer than you.
A grin appeared on David’s face. Even now, faced with fate, the True Faith’s arrogance knew no bounds.
“I have the option of taking you in alive,” the man said. His voice was low, slightly above a whisper, and he made no effort to call above the noise surrounding him. David heard him, but only because the webs brought him the words. “Lie down and end this, and I’ll bring you to the First Council unharmed.”
David’s smile grew.
A single, last man shot from one of the large transports, probably one that had been hiding, trying not to face death. Perhaps he thought David and his webs were distracted, or perhaps the transport ejected him without his approval, but the webs reached up into the sky and obliterated him before he touched down. Blood exploded from his wrapped body, and then the webs got a stranglehold on everything, disintegrating him to nothing but a bloody mist in seconds.
“Did you bring anyone else?” David asked.
Raylyn saw and heard everything.
She heard the last soldier’s shriek as those dynamic webs wrapped around him, then heard it end as those same webs squelched all the life in him.
The Disciple didn’t move.
If they had any chance of surviving, it was in this showdown, yet neither man appeared scared of the other.
“Use it,” Lynda said. “Grab his goddamn nanotech and rip it from his body.”
Raylyn said nothing. She only listened.
“Did you bring anyone else?” the gray-eyed demon asked.
“Lie down,” the Disciple repeated.
The electrical webs moved across the platform, slowly, not swarming as they had against the soldiers. The webs seemed to be curious, wanting to watch these two play their macho stare down game. They stopped a foot from them, surrounding both and putting them in an electrical cocoon, more coming behind and piling on.
“You have no nanotech,” the Disciple said, his voice still calm.
“FUCK!” Lynda shouted, tears pouring down her face.
Raylyn’s hands shook, but she wasn’t crying.
“I wasn’t born here,” the gray eyes said, that sick smile still covering his face.
Yet, the Disciple seemed okay with it all. Perhaps there was something he could do, even without nanotech assisting him. He had to know something Raylyn didn’t, because he’d made them descend to the platform. He’d hopped out of the transport without hesitation, even after they lost control of the damned thing.
He’d gone toward this monster, and so that meant he had to know something they didn’t. It meant he had to have power over this situation.
Raylyn watched as the Disciple moved forward, darting with speed she hadn’t known possible. He seemed to fly, to cut through the air as if he was a part of it, just another particle. Raylyn’s eyes could scarcely keep up as he obliterated the space between the two of them.
Hope rose inside her, growing higher than the fear and desperation, wrapping its lovely and gentle fingers around her heart. Because nothing moved like this Disciple. Nothing could move with such speed, grace, and yet danger.
The webs reached out. With maybe only a foot separating the Disciple and the demon, the webs reached for him. All at once. They collapsed, turning the lithe figure into one of gray static, and Raylyn finally saw emotion in the Disciple. Finally saw something besides settled calm stretch across Rogan’s face.
Unbridled fear.
His mouth opened to scream and Raylyn would never be sure if she actually heard a sound, or if it was only her imagination.
His mouth opened, but that was the last graceful movement he ever made.
Blood hung in the air where the Disciple used to stand. Blood and tangled electrical currents as the body they had attacked disintegrated.
“There are two of you inside. Come out.”
“NO!” Lynda shouted. “GO! GO, RAYLYN! GET OUT OF HERE!”
Raylyn’s body was shaking too badly to move, let alone gather thoughts and command the transport to leave.
“RAYLYN!” Lynda shouted, spit and snot flying from her face.
Raylyn heard the webs grab hold of the transport, her eyes flashing to Lynda’s side. The webs cut through the metal door as if it were water, not rushing on Lynda as it had the Disciple. Their thin fingers reached out and grabbed her wrist and ankles, blood spurting from Lynda’s flesh immediately. Raylyn listened to her friend’s scream, Lynda’s left hand reaching out to grab hold of her boss.
Raylyn moved back, reflexively, fear and revulsion taking hold. She didn’t reach forward, didn’t try to grab Lynda, because the webs had her, and Raylyn knew there was no coming back from them.
The electrical currents wrenched outward, powerful, smashing Lynda’s body first into the door, then using her to rip it from its hinges. The webs lifted Lynda into the air, though they quickly cut through her wrist and ankle, her body falling.
More webs caught her in a hammock, and Raylyn watched as her friend quickly burned alive. Her blood sizzled as it dropped to the platform beneath.
“One more,” the man outside said. “Come out, or I’ll come in for you.”
Raylyn didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what she was looking at. She didn’t know anything about what was happening around her. She had lost all ability to function.
Yet her feet moved. The same part of her that had backed away when Lynda reached for help—the reptilian piece of her mind that only knew to keep living … it knew what to do. Her feet followed the same path as the Disciple had minutes before, and then she was standing outside the transport and facing the man she’d come to kill. Besides a few tumbled stones, his compound stood and his people were safe above.
Everything Raylyn had brought with her was destroyed or dead. Everything but her and the transport she just exited.
“Keep coming,” the demon said.
Raylyn’s feet did as he commanded. Electricity moved through the air, static filling her hair and causing it to frizz upward. She felt heat, though from the fire she had brought or that which this demon created, Raylyn didn’t know.
“You understand what I am, don’t you?” the man asked as Raylyn finally reached him. His eyes were instruments of terror, gray things that flickered as no human’s should. They were the stuff of ghosts, of the dead, of that which could not exist but somehow did.
Raylyn nodded.
“The
weapon, right? That’s what you call me?”
Raylyn nodded again.
“I am the Prophet, and I bring death for you and all of your kind. You came for me and you sent men to kill me. You will live so that you can go tell your priests the truth. Their time is over. Tell them they can bow or die, but they rule no more.” The man leaned close and Raylyn saw sparks flying from his eyes. Constant, minuscule arcs of electricity. “Do you understand?”
Raylyn nodded.
“Go then, back to your false god, and tell him his time is at end.”
Two
Nicki understood little of what was happening around her, and none of how it happened. She watched the man with gray eyes destroy an armada—though that word wasn’t even hers. It was someone else’s inside of the war she watched. Another person had called the ships an armada and Nicki merely latched onto the word.
She stood next to the dark man. Before he had watched her, but now it was her turn, though she didn’t know where she was. She looked around, sure this was another ministry. The one underground, because she stood on a platform at the top of a building, but yet everything else was above her. An all encompassing light filled the surface overhead, something that stretched forever; Nicki had heard the word whispered before: the SkyLight.
She looked at the man next to her and saw him staring back. Heavy metal objects were falling in front of the platform, fire gusting off them and creating a wake of hot air behind.
The man stared at her, and she had heard his name whispered before, too. Perhaps not his, per se, but his kind. The weapon.
His eyes glowed gray and for the first time Nicki understood something about that, though in the moment, she couldn’t say what.
The two saw each other and …
There was kinship. She felt that true, because the electrical webs spawning from his eyes spoke to her. They didn’t dare reach for her, because they knew their master, but Nicki felt their power … perhaps even their longing.
The dark man turned to look out from the platform, for more people were coming toward him. All of this, the armada in the sky, it was for him—people wanted him dead just as they did Nicki.
For the same reason? she wondered. She couldn’t answer the question, though, because she didn’t truly know why people wanted her dead. Because she had the sight? Because she could see this platform, though she was across the planet?
Is that any reason to die?
And if not, is the reason they want to kill him any better?
The man summoned the last … transports. That was the word, though Nicki knew it didn’t originate in her mind.
He was willingly going to war with them.
Nicki looked out at the transports, larger ones than the wrecked ships falling in front of her.
And then, without any input from her, the platform disappeared and Nicki found herself back in the motel room. Gray static filled the room, much thicker than what she’d seen with the dark man’s webs. It filled everything, and though she could see through it, she knew no one else could.
But you’re not with them right now. You’re somewhere different. Between life and death. Between the very moments of life. You’re walking between raindrops right now.
Nicki looked around the room. The ceiling above was in the process of exploding. She saw wood and brick frozen in the air, on their way to the sky. High above, there appeared to be another transport—the first one she’d ever seen in the Old World. Nicki turned back to the room. Men wearing helmets hung in the air, their bodies in the process of being thrown backward. She looked to her left and saw the first man that had entered, the one with the gun. His shoulder was bleeding and his eyes were open. He stared back at her, but Nicki knew he didn’t see her. He’d only been looking at her when she stepped between into this different … plane.
Nicki walked over to the man, his gun discarded somewhere in the room—probably hanging in the air like the other suspended men. His eyes didn’t follow her as she moved. She squatted down next to him and looked at the wound, but knew nothing of it. Not whether he would live or die.
That’s not true.
You know the answer to that very well.
And Nicki found she did.
In this plane, this world that existed outside of time, she understood that she could kill them all. The men wearing their helmets, the one lying here on the floor—even herself. Whatever was happening, for this very moment, she controlled it. And if she continued, if the gray light filling everything kept expanding, they could all die.
Where’s Dad? she wondered. The memory came back at once, how all of this started. Him … something hitting him and propelling him back against the sink’s mirror. Nicki stood and turned, her eyes frantically searching for her father.
Whatever force she had used, it was hitting him as well. He wasn’t in the air, but she saw the pressure pinning him to the wall, his hands plastered to his left and right. The man that had been trying to beat him to death no longer stood on the ground, but hung in the air where his black club could no longer hurt her father.
Yet you can. You will. If you don’t stop this.
A dark man waited for her when this was done, one with gray eyes and the power to destroy armadas. At least one Ministry waited as well. None of that mattered though, not when Nicki looked at her father. Everyone in this room could live, if it meant he continued living, too.
But for how long?
No answer came. Nothing was promised, but his death wouldn’t be at her hand.
She went back to the place she had stood at. She breathed in, knowing what to do, even if not how. It was like a baby naturally rooting for its mother’s nipple, simple instinct.
She took another breath, keeping her eyes open, and as she sucked in air, the gray returned to her. Through her eyes and mouth, it returned to its owner.
Nicki took back everything she had shoved into the world, and when there was no more gray but only the sun’s brilliant light above, she collapsed to the floor.
The Disciple stood across the street from the Bancroft Motel. A person on the other side of the world, one named Raylyn Brinson, would not have believed her eyes—indeed, she had just witnessed the very same man die.
Or, at least, this Disciple appeared to be the same man.
His name was also Rogan Nether, but that mattered little to him. He was one of many Rogan Nethers, all of them looking exactly the same. He didn’t know that one of his brothers had just died, but he wouldn’t have cared if he did. The First Council had given the Disciple his orders, and now he stood across from the Bancroft Motel for one reason.
A woman was inside, and his job was to bring her back to the True Faith.
He had watched as others entered the motel room, while he remained standing back. Something hadn’t felt right. The first man who entered was from the True Faith, the Disciple could feel his nanotech. The others, though, they were from this place.
All of them descending at once, the Old World and the New World.
Yet, the Disciple didn’t feel comfortable about it, so he hadn’t ventured inside. His mission was to bring the girl back, and dying would ensure he failed.
A few minutes later, light exploded from the room, and the Disciple understood the color well. Perhaps as well as anyone else on Earth, for it was such a light that had given him and his brothers their purpose. The Disciple harbored no doubt, no second guessing. The light could only originate from one being—the weapon.
He had taken a few steps back, the light shining through the open door. He knew a transport floated high above, but the Disciple didn’t worry about it.
He watched the room explode. The roof ripped from the building, rocks and bricks surging into the sky. Glass burst from the room’s small windows. More light raced outward, filling the entire parking lot.
For a brief moment, the Disciple thought he would die, too, as the light would surely consume him as it was everything else. His eyes remained open as it rushed toward him.
<
br /> And then, the light stopped.
It paused for a single moment, and then reversed course, moving back over the vehicles and structures it had just enveloped. Slowly. Not in any hurry, as it had been seconds before.
And a few seconds later? It was gone. No more gray light. No more Color of the Damned.
The Disciple stood still for another second, feeling uneasy, but no longer the sense of impending death. Rogan Nether, one of an infinite number, trusted his instincts—as did his brothers. They lived and died off such instincts.
The Disciple made up his mind and crossed the street. He felt nanotech only in the man who had entered first, and didn’t bother looking at him as he made his way into the room. The Disciple thought briefly of killing him, but knew that it had nothing to do with his mission.
The girl lay in the middle of the room. The Disciple heard groans, a single outright scream, and weak movement as people dealt with the mayhem’s aftermath. The girl wasn’t moving, but the Disciple saw she still breathed. He walked over to her and looked down. He felt no fear, though a mixture of hate and respect rested in his heart. The light only meant one thing, and this creature had created it.
The Disciple bent forward and lifted her up, placing her on his shoulder. He turned and looked at the man on the floor. The Disciple didn’t understand why he was here, but he had come for the girl … and that led to a few options.
He had either come to kill her or protect her.
Perhaps he possessed the Blood of the Touched.
The Disciple’s mind reached for the man’s nanotech, not bothering to read it yet. There would be time for that later. Instead he lifted the man in the air, not overly careful, only sure not to cause severe harm.
With both people on either shoulder, the Disciple left the room.
The Old World’s Pope, Yule Goran, was at his desk when he found out the horrible news. He sat at his desk more and more, and he absolutely could not stand it. He preferred to walk around the Vatican’s gardens, to be in the Lord’s world rather than what man had created.
