Merciless

by Robin Parrish

  Alex blinked awake. A scream burst forth from her mouth, the kind of agonizing, howling scream that could only pass beyond lips that had been forcibly held closed for days, perhaps weeks. She collapsed in a heap on the ground, shriveling practically into nothingness and trying to drift off into death's cold arms.

  Lisa screamed in the distance.

  Alex jolted awake and, like Daniel, looked up just in time to see Payton standing atop the Camaro, his sword twirling in his hand and preparing to strike at Lisa, who stood outside her side door just below him.

  Alex stuck a hand out in his direction. "No," she whispered.

  Payton nearly dropped his sword from whatever emotion she'd shot at him, then staggered backward onto one knee, seemingly unable to get his bearings.

  Daniel seized their one opportunity. "Lisa, touch his blood with one of the Stones!" he shouted. "The symbols say blood flow! Touch his blood with a fragment of the Dominion Stone, and Oblivion will lose his hold!"

  Lisa's eyes searched the car and spotted a three-inch shard of glass resting on the dash; it was all that remained of the windshield. She grabbed it and jumped up onto the hood, where she reached down and slashed a deep cut right into Payton's left cheek.

  The old man had already retrieved a piece of the Dominion Stone, and he tossed it to her. She dropped the glass with one hand, caught the Stone fragment in the other, and mashed the Stone into his wound as hard as she could.

  Payton started at the pain in his face, then blinked several times as if waking up from a long sleep.

  Alex fainted into Daniel's arms. He scooped her up as best he could and realized how hot her skin was. Under the battered frame, she boiled with fever. The scabs covering her stomach and right upper arm were black and crusty. The soles of her feet were covered in red sores and blisters, most of which were open and oozing pus. Her leg muscles twitched now and again, a sign of exhaustion and overuse.

  Daniel carried her slowly back to the car, doing his best not to let his weary legs slip out from under him in the blood pooling on the freeway in the rain.

  When he got back to the car, no one spoke. Payton was still lying on the roof of the car, grasping his sword with one hand like it was a safety blanket, his only root to reality. He appeared coherent, watching the actions of everyone else, but the pained, bitter look in his eyes was thousands of miles away.

  With the Camaro wrecked beyond use, the old man had found an old station wagon with the keys still in it and a mostly filled tank of gas. Daniel placed Alex carefully in the backseat of the car, where the old man got to work dressing her wounds with some supplies from Daniel's backpack. She stirred awake at his ministrations and clutched her stomach in agony. She stifled powerful emotions that forced tears streaming down her cheeks, crying out in great heaving sobs of anguish.

  Daniel planted himself in the driver's seat and leaned back. Out of breath and drenched in blood and his own sweat, he was pretty sure he never wanted to get up again.

  "YOU REALLY THINK YOU changed, after you were given a new body?" asked Grant's duplicate.

  "Yes," Grant replied without hesitation. "I care about people! I care about everybody. I risked my life to save them."

  "Certainly true," his reflection admitted. "But in the end, you could not prevent them from suffering the terrible fate that is now upon them. Many have already been lost. Do you even know why you saved their lives again and again?"

  Grant paused, not sure what his companion was expecting to hear. "It was the right thing to do."

  "And why does doing the right thing concern you?"

  Grant had no answer. He remained silent for so long that the mirror man finally spoke again.

  "Let me put it another way. Your sister, Julie Saunders, is dead."

  "My fault ... She tried to warn me ... I led her to her death."

  "Yes," the double said. "Perhaps that responsibility does lie at your feet. Or perhaps it's because of the actions of others. Either way, can you accept that there is nothing you could have done to save her, in the end?"

  "Never!" Grant cried with conviction. "With all the power I had, I could've ... I should have-I could've stopped the bullet or pushed her out of the way, or-"

  "No, no, no," the other man interrupted. "You misunderstand my question. Even if you had saved Julie's life from Devlin's bullet, you could not have stopped the disease that was ravaging her muscular system from ultimately degenerating her quality of life until she was dead. Understand this, it is crucial: In the end, her fate would have been exactly the same. So I ask again: Can you accept that even you could not have prevented her from dying? Whether it occurred on the same day that you died or twenty years after?"

  "No," Grant admitted. "What was any of it for, if not to help people avoid pain and suffering?"

  "An admirable goal, if ultimately futile ... Still, I'd like to believe that you changed, but the evidence is simply too damning. See for yourself .

  A new scene materialized in the blackness before Grant's eyes, and this one he knew all too well. He relived it in his thoughts and nightmares often.

  A broken window in a high-rise penthouse. Grant, kneeling on the ground by the window, Alex nearby. Cradled in his arms was Hannah, the life draining out of her from a bullet wound to the neck.

  "Don't let them take ..." Hannah said groggily, fading fast, "your soul ..."

  He cried out her name at the same moment that she stopped breathing. He held her in his arms, unwilling to let her go, even at Alex's attempts to snap him back to manifest ...

  In the blackness, the Grant of the here and now watched his own visage change in the 3-D image, becoming dark, vengeful, full of rage. The whole room began to shake as if an earthquake were happening, but it was no earthquake. It was his wrath made reality.

  The scene faded. "No need to relive the whole thing," Grant's doppelganger said. "You know what came next. The skies turned dark, fire threatened to fall from the sky, and the lives of everyone in Los Angeles were nearly extinguished. All because of your inability to control your rage."

  Grant said nothing. A series of scenes flickered to life in the darkness, coming faster and faster now, some so quick that he only caught glimpses of them.

  He saw himself standing in Substation Lambda Alpha, beneath Los Angeles, facing down his grandfather with an explosive eruption of anger...

  He ran into a street in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, his breathing fast, looking like he was ready to detonate, when the walls surrounding the Old City flew up into the sky and burst into powder ...

  He was storming into the attic hideout of the Upholders of the Crown in London. He marched inside, dictated demands to the four Brits, and threatened them to within an inch of their lives if they didn't obey ...

  He was inside the same attic sometime later, sitting on the couch, all focus on his teammate Nora. Her body left the ground and was pinned up against the far wall as she struggled to loosen an invisible hand around her throat ...

  Devlin was leading him into the heart of the round cavern known as the Hollow, toward the gaping, howling hole at its center, and Grant was following him blindly, ignoring the pleas of his sister to stop, to turn back ... Moments later, her blood splattered on his face, his eyes turned red, and he was shoved in the back by Devlin into the hole ...

  The images dissipated, and Grant's double walked slowly around and stepped in front of him. "Tell me again about how you've changed."

  The old man did his best on Alex, and she'd fallen into a feverish sleep. The others, near collapse from exhaustion, had sat in stunned silence until Lisa finally suggested that perhaps they should move someplace that wasn't so exposed. Who knew what Oblivion would do now that Payton and Alex had been freed? Payton mumbled something about knowing a place, and so he hot-wired a broken-down sedan that was abandoned nearby, and Daniel joined him, taking the driver's seat. The old man followed in the station wagon, carrying Alex, who was unconscious, and Lisa, who tended to her.

 
They drove east on the 10 in silence for hours, or possibly days. There was no way to be sure. The state line came and disappeared, and Arizona directed them to a northbound turn onto 1-17 at Phoenix. Thirty miles north of Phoenix, not far from the Interstate, Payton motioned for Daniel to get off the highway. Payton directed him through a series of black, mountainous desert roads until they came to a stop at some kind of cliff-side factory.

  Purely utilitarian, the place must've been twenty thousand square feet, if not more, with dingy cinder-block walls and a flat aluminum roof. It was a relic, like something airlifted out of East Germany or the old Soviet bloc. A single metal staircase on one side led up from the ground to a small grated landing in front of a normal-sized door. Near the back of the building, beyond the stairs, was a cluster of electric generators that prevented the building from depending on local power.

  The rain had stopped long ago, leaving a clotting glaze over the vehicles and the blackened ash-like roads, and a musky, metallic odor drifting through the damp air. Alex never awoke as Daniel and the old man carried her up the stairs, following Payton and Lisa. Payton mumbled a sequence of numbers, which Lisa typed into a keypad to the right of the door. They heard a tiny clack as the door unlocked.

  Inside, they were greeted with a completely open space, much of which held a massive gymnasium outfitted with stateof-the-art equipment.

  "What is this?" Daniel asked, the first time he'd spoken since before they'd left California.

  Payton leaned against a wall for support, refusing help from any of them. He peeled off his blood-soaked black shirt and tossed it in a trash bin near the door.

  "My home," Payton replied, his voice barely audible but echoing throughout the giant chamber.

  Everyone took their turn at resting and showering and changing into fresh clothes. Alex required help just moving, so Lisa aided her in a quick bath and change of clothes before she was allowed to sleep. More bomb shelter than home, the place was stocked with enough food to last through a nuclear winter, so everyone enjoyed being properly fed for the first time in a long time.

  A lofted second floor extended over the open area to the right of the entrance. It was open and visible to the main area below, but sectioned off by the long stairway that led up to it. Typically, Payton slept here, but now he insisted it be used by Alex for her recovery.

  Daniel and Lisa worked with the old man for hours assessing the damage: Payton was more or less his usually fit self, though profoundly dehydrated and in desperate need of sleep. Alex, on the other hand, they could barely believe was alive. She suffered from second- and third-degree burns on her stomach and right arm, which had created dark scabs. Each had gone far too long without being properly treated, and the resulting infections now boiled in her bloodstream. She also had a severe concussion and a few broken ribs due to her ejection from the Mustang.

  Payton's home came complete with every medical supply one might ever need, including painkillers and strong antibiotics to fight Alex's infection, and these were administered not long after their arrival. But combined with the concussion, she was largely confused and incoherent when awake, vomited occasionally, and had a dangerously high fever she could not seem to break.

  All five of them-even Payton, who rarely spoke and spent much of his time among his training equipment-feared each time Alex fell asleep that she might never reawaken.

  With every moment feeling like now, it became difficult to fall into the routine of day and night, but they all did their best while waiting for Alex and Payton to recover. Makeshift beds were created from whatever could be found. Meals were shared. And they waited for a sense of what to do next. They tried to engage the one-handed man and discover his secrets, yet he refused to share even his name, seemingly content in his silence.

  It was sometime during the awake period after their third sleeping cycle that Daniel and Lisa seated themselves in front of a gigantic flat-screen television and turned it on for the first time. Payton's high-tech equipment allowed them to pick up on signals still being transmitted by some of the major news networks, but most were intermittent and unreliable, since the satellites that normally broadcast their transmissions were slowly dying, one by one.

  They were in a small seating nook near the facility's kitchen, located directly beneath the second floor, where Alex rested. It wasn't long before they were joined by the old manwho'd taken to staying at Alex's side whenever he wasn't sleeping-and Payton, who showed up covered in sweat, his sword held tightly in one hand.

  The news was not uplifting. The darkness and the blackened earth had spread completely, covering the entire planet. It was done; transformation complete. Video reports from all over the world showed much of what they had already seenthe volcanic rock and scattered wildfires that covered the earth, the oceans that were still evaporating, the occasional raining blood, and the rivers that had turned into hot lava.

  Natural springs and wells had become dark pits of deadly flame-flames so hot, no one could safely approach them. The global suicide rate had peaked to an all-time high, and there were countless reports of people losing their sanity. Going completely mad, these individuals were breaking into homes where others were huddled in fear, and killing them all-or worse. Bizarre new religions popped up all over the globe, most of them taking their cues from the bloodred rain, utilizing ritual sacrifices of animals or even human beings in attempts to appease whatever gods had been angered into unleashing these horrific conditions upon the planet.

  The slow loss of the world's oceans was having a dramatic effect on sea life. It was unprecedented: Both the fish and underwater plants were dying and drying up, starting with those nearest to shorelines. Every kind of ship-from tankers and ocean liners to battleships and submarines-made for the nearest port they could reach. Many of them made it. Several thousand did not, some hitting land on the dried-up ocean floor, others opting to sail for the central areas of open sea still existing, hoping to ride out the phenomenon for as long as possible.

  Similarly, the fiery storm clouds enveloping the entire planet had caused authorities to ground all aircraft. Astronauts manning the International Space Station managed to send a few grainy images of the earth down to the surface; the pictures showed the opposite of what those on the planet's surface saw. Instead of black clouds with fire peeking through, these new images revealed what at first seemed to be a small sun.

  The world was on fire.

  Three sleep cycles later, with everyone else asleep, Payton sat up, unable to achieve unconsciousness.

  He watched the news footage, alone in the kitchen nook, the volume low. The sounds were of little interest to him. His attention was focused on the blurry video of Oblivion. It seemed no one was able to get close enough to him to get his picture, but whether that was Oblivion's own doing or that of the young British girl Charlotte, who was still held under Oblivion's thrall and could control electrical transmissions, was open to debate. The best the news had been able to achieve was this one fuzzy image, shot with a super-high magnification from miles away.

  Payton didn't need to see every detail to know exactly what he was looking at. He remembered Oblivion's cold, lifeless face, his eyes of fire, and his stone-gray skin all too well.

  Oblivion had led his army and the Secretum eastward toward Syria until finally turning sharply south. He was already approaching the northern Syrian border, and speculation was rife among the newscasters as to where his final destination might be.

  Most of them agreed that in all likelihood ... he was headed for Israel. Though there was no evidence anyone could come up with to support this theory, somehow it just seemed to fit.

  What Oblivion had done to Payton, what he'd done to Alex, what he was doing even now to the rest of the Loci, not to mention his march of destruction upon the world ...

  It was unforgivable. There was no punishment too harsh, no anger too severe, no death he could give to Oblivion that would be slow or painful enough. Oblivion would pay for this, and so would t
he Secretum. Every last one of them.

  In conjuring Oblivion into human flesh, the Secretum had betrayed the entire human race.

  And as far as Payton was concerned, betrayal was the worst sin in the book.

  Twenty-Four Years Ago

  "Girls," he chided the three young ladies sitting at the back of the classroom. "Pass that note to the front of the class, please. It will be read aloud before this period is over."

  There were groans and sighs at the back of the room, while snickering presided over the front. It was a small room at the private Catholic school, allowing for no more than twelve students at a time, and even now it wasn't full.

  But this was many a student's favorite class, a fact that Father Bernard prided himself in. Who would have ever guessed that Theology could become any teenager's favorite subject? It reinforced the instinct he followed when, fresh out of seminary, he'd chosen to spend the first few years of his career teaching, influencing the lives of the younger generation, before moving on to his own parish.

  "Now, we were discussing the passage in Joshua where God struck down the city of Jericho and every living thing in it, for Israel's sake, so that the Israelites could move into this land. As you should recall, God had promised this land to the Israelites many generations before, so this action was taken to restore to them what was rightfully theirs."

  A hand shot up. "Father?"

  "Yes, Simon," he replied to one of his favorite students, a brilliant young man with tremendous potential. Father Bernard had high hopes for this one.

  Simon had a quizzical look upon his oval face. "The passage says that God wiped out the entire population of the town-that's tens of thousands of lives. And under the rule of King David, the Israelite army decimated countless peoples in God's name, butchering and slaughtering their enemies. Yet back in Exodus, the Ten Commandments command us never to take a life. And later in the New Testament, Jesus raises the dead and heals the sick and commands His followers never to kill."