Tomorrow's Gone Season 1

by Sean Platt

  Pain, and too many fresh bruises, wracked his entire torso up to his ribs.

  The place smelled of dust, sweat, metal, and blood.

  There was a lone door, thick metal and closed. Judging from the blood staining the concrete floor and the metal portable table on wheels housing tools and other instruments to cut, hammer, and otherwise inflict pain, this freezer now served as a torture chamber and interrogation room.

  The bandit had broad shoulders and almost no neck. But he had plenty of muscles, and the unwavering patience to keep asking Pascal the same questions on repeat.

  “How many Alts are there in Hope Springs?”

  Pascal held his silence, refusing to give the man information or the satisfaction of knowing how much he was hurting him.

  The door opened with a heavy metal clank and the man with fire hands entered the room. He was shorter, but also more muscular than Pascal had imagined from those glimpses of memory. His long white hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His pale eyes appeared almost pink as Pascal looked him up and down.

  Fire Hands turned to Mountain. “He’s not talking?”

  “He will.”

  “Of that I’m most certain.” His voice was deep, almost melodious. He smiled and leaned close to Pascal. “Tell me, Johan, do you like pain?”

  Mountain offered him a healthy nod. “I think he does. Probably gets off on it.”

  “You wish.” Pascal smiled.

  Mountain moved forward like he was going to lay into him again, but the white-haired man raised his hand. The big man halted.

  “Leave us. We have things to discuss.”

  Mountain grunted, then shot a dirty look at Pascal, like a childhood bully saying, Just you wait until after school.

  “So, you are Johan Pascal, famed Ranger and reader of minds,” Fire Hands said once Mountain had closed the door.

  “And who the hell are you?” Pascal refused to shrink from his gaze.

  “Sorry for not introducing myself. My name is Remy, and I’ve been waiting so long to finally meet you.”

  “Maybe you could let me out of these chains and we can go grab a beer or something?”

  A polite little laugh, then, “Perhaps one day, friend. I do believe that you and I have far more in common than you might imagine.”

  “Oh? Enlighten me.”

  “We’re both Alts, for starters.” He raised his right hand, flicked his wrist, and a flame lit the air before vanishing.

  “Impressive. I’ve seen your handiwork.”

  “Did you like?”

  “You killed innocent people with families. You handed a child over to a man who then sold her into sexual slavery. Seems to me that you’re just another monster in a world with too many.”

  “A self-loathing Alt is the worst kind.” Remy slapped his palm onto Pascal’s chest.

  His hand caught fire, sizzling against Pascal as he screamed, louder and louder until Remy finally pulled his hand away.

  Pascal looked down at the raw, bleeding skin, then glared at his captor. “Fuck you.”

  “I really hate to get off on such a bad foot. Sorry about that, but meeting an Alt who fails to appreciate their gifts has a way of angering me more than most things. We are the same, you and I.”

  “No.” Pascal shook his head. “We are not.”

  “Have you not killed for your kingdom?”

  “Only those who deserve it.”

  “And that’s where we differ — our view on the deserving. There is a war coming, my friend. I suggest reconsidering your allegiances.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Stratum has been waging a war on our kind, collecting, experimenting, enslaving, and killing us.”

  “I’m not with Stratum — you can take that up with them!”

  “No, you’re not, Johan. But you’re also not protecting our people from what is inevitably coming. They are not safe in Hope Springs.”

  “Say you’re right; what do you want from me?”

  “The list of all the Alts in the cities. The Registry.”

  “We don’t have a list.”

  Remy burned him again, in the same place.

  “Fuck!” Pascal screamed.

  “How many people are on the list?”

  “Why?”

  “I wish to liberate them. Keep them from becoming victims of the coming war.”

  “There is no war.”

  “About that, you are wrong. It is coming, whether you see it or not. Its seeds are being sewn in the depths of Stratum as we speak. They are threatened, and wish to turn us against each other so they may weaken our resolve, and in the end eradicate us all.”

  “You sound like my grandfather talking about immigrants before The Event.”

  “Your grandfather was right to fear them, but afraid of the wrong aliens.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You, me, and every Alt out there is an evolution of humanity. We are all made by the aliens out in The Ruins. We are no longer human, and the citizens of Stratum know that we are what’s next.”

  Pascal wasn’t sure what to think. People had obviously been affected by whatever landed on their planet that day. But he’d never seen himself as anything less than human.

  “You know it’s true,” Remy said. “And if not, then you will believe me soon enough. Now, the names.”

  “Even if I had access to the Registry, I don’t remember their names!”

  Remy moved to Pascal’s inner thigh, and a brand new place to burn.

  He screamed until his world went black from the pain.

  Pascal stood inside the kitchen, looking outside the back door of their first house as Terri painted their large willow tree against the overcast sky from her usual spot on the porch.

  She was concentrating on the canvas without any clue she was being watched. The tip of her tongue peeked out of her mouth as she focused on the painting’s finer details.

  He loved watching her create. Art made her happy, so by extension it did the same for him.

  She turned, saw him spying on her, and blushed, looking down and away like she usually did before meeting his eyes with a slightly embarrassed smile and mouthing the words, “I love you.”

  Pascal mouthed them back.

  She set her paintbrush down and approached the back door. Terri tried the knob but it refused to move.

  “I think I locked myself out,” she said, her voice muffled.

  He went to the glass door and tried to turn the lock. But it wasn’t moving for him, either.

  “Ha, ha, let me in,” Terri said, smiling but sounding confused.

  “I’m not messing around.”

  Thunder exploded, so sudden and loud that it sent him windmilling backwards, visibly startled for an embarrassing moment.

  Terri laughed at him.

  Then he saw something impossible. A thick cloud of purple about a half-mile away, yawning from the tree line to the dark clouds overhead. Moving, fast, like a tsunami eating everything in its way.

  It scared the hell out of him, whatever the thing was. He had to get Terri inside, maybe seek cover deeper into the house.

  He grabbed the knob and twisted at the lock, but it still wouldn’t budge.

  She turned and saw the approaching obscenity in the sky. Her eyes widened in horror as she turned back around and banged on the door.

  “Johan!”

  But still he couldn’t get the lock to budge.

  Her eyes were pleading for him to open the door.

  The cloud was a few blocks away, its movement horrifyingly fast.

  He saw the kitchen chair and grabbed it, then raced toward the door shouting, “Get back!”

  Terri moved out of the way.

  He smashed the chair against the glass door.

  It bounced back hard, hitting him in the chest and knocking him to the floor.

  Outside, the purple had crushed through the tree line across the street, closing the distance in a couple of heartbeats.
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br />   Pascal screamed as it rushed forward, sounding like a tornado howling against the house in a bellow of wind.

  Blinded by a world of purple, he fell to the floor.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d lost consciousness for, but his entire body had been pummeled by the amethyst storm by the time he got it back.

  He stood, then remembered that his wife had been trapped outside.

  He ran to the door and this time the lock opened.

  He found Terri on the ground, kneeling on all fours, hair like a curtain in her face. He stepped outside, fearing the worst, that his wife had been blinded or maimed by the storm.

  At least she was moving.

  “Terri.” He went to help her stand.

  But when she looked up, her eyes were white voids. She loudly hissed and sprang towards him, hands clawed to scratch his eyes out.

  No, this isn’t how it happened. I didn’t even see them die. They were on the other side of the county.

  I wasn’t there.

  He fell backwards, hitting his head hard on the ground. Gone from one dream and into another, now back in the Hope Springs dojo, lying on the mat, beaten and bruised from the lavender storm.

  He no reason to stand, now back in a world where his wife and daughter no longer existed. A painful world he’d been forced to live for too long.

  Pascal wanted to keep his eyes closed and let it all fade away. He wanted to ride his pain like a wave into death.

  Maybe he’d find them in an afterlife.

  Yes, just close my eyes and …

  He heard a voice calling him.

  But it wasn’t his wife’s.

  The voice belonged to a boy.

  I’m sorry, Pascal. I should have listened.

  He was ripped from his reverie by the sound of a heavy door swinging open. Then Mountain reentered the room and slipped on his gloves.

  Pascal let his head loll, feigning a struggle for consciousness as he mumbled incoherently.

  Mountain came closer, pounding one fist into another. “Okay, pal. Time’s up. We need to know where the Registry is.”

  “Why’s that?” Pascal asked, slurring his voice.

  “Because, we need to know which ones to take and which ones to kill.”

  “W-what?” Pascal laughed, still pretending he was barely there.

  “Keep laughing. We’re taking Hope Springs tonight.”

  Pascal pretended not to hear him, closing his eyes and letting his head fall slack enough to make Mountain think he might be dead.

  He listened as the man came closer and closer, until his heavy breath was upon him. Then Pascal thrust out his legs and wrapped them around the man’s upper half before pulling him into him.

  Using the man’s mass as leverage, Pascal managed enough momentum to lift his cuffed hands off of the meat hook and fall atop his torturer.

  Mountain tried to scream, but Pascal was fast, thrusting his hands up to the man’s skull and flooding it with terrors.

  He tried to resist, but Pascal was too desperate and filled with adrenaline to give the man a fighting chance. He unleashed everything into the man’s head, something he’d never done to anyone. A quarter of this assault would turn a normal person unconscious. This would surely turn him into a casserole.

  As Mountain began slipping into catatonia, Pascal reached into his mind and searched for information about the attack.

  He only got a few glimpses, as Mountain — real name Mortimer — was considered muscle and not much in the loop. But he did learn that most of the bandits had left to assume their position somewhere near Hope Springs.

  Remy would be coming back before the attack, to find out if Pascal had surrendered the Registry’s location, or names of the Alts.

  To make matters more pressing, Mountain had overheard someone discussing an inside man in Hope Springs, someone high in the Rangers. He had to find a way back.

  But first Pascal needed to get free of his cuffs. He reached for a knife from the table of instruments to end Mountain’s life before searching for the keys.

  He bent down and saw Mountain’s eyes blink open.

  The giant took a swing.

  Pascal dodged the blow and stumbled backward.

  Pain exploded through his body. He cried out as he looked down, surprised to see that Mountain’s hand hadn’t been empty, and that there was now a knife jutting out of his gut.

  Mountain growled as he stood and lumbered toward Pascal, stumbling forward with his meaty arms out, trying to wrestle his former captive to the ground.

  But instead his head hit the wall to momentarily stun him.

  Pascal, gripping a knife, quickly moved toward Mountain and thrust the blade into the back of his skull.

  And now the giant was finally down for good.

  Pascal looked down at his injury, blood spilling like water from a busted faucet. He ripped the man’s shirt and pressed it to the wound, afraid to remove the blade and bleed out further.

  Hope Springs needed his warning, but Pascal wasn’t sure if he could make it that far.

  But then he remembered his dream, and Elijah trying to talk to him.

  Had it been some sort of reverie, or was the Cadet really reaching out?

  Pascal closed his eyes and sought the child’s mind.

  Forty-Four

  Elijah Freeman

  Charlotte was silent the whole way back, walking with Otis’s blood still staining her face and shirt.

  She refused to clean up. Instead she kept walking, ignoring the staring neighbors as they passed in mortification.

  Elijah walked beside her, smiling sheepishly, saying things like, “She’s okay” and “just bit her tongue.”

  He didn’t know what to say or how to help her. She was obviously in shock from what had happened with Hunter and Otis. It must have triggered memories of her father’s murder and its nightmarish aftermath.

  He should have done something. But Elijah didn’t feel right intervening without her asking him. He’d seen the way some men treated women as lesser or weaker, but Elijah knew better. Mom had taught him that women didn’t need men to automatically intervene on their behalf.

  But he was also taught to stand up for others. So he felt like a failure for having done nothing.

  They arrived at Pascal’s house.

  Elijah knocked on the door since Charlotte had no key.

  Val opened up. Her eyes went wide at the sight of all that blood.

  “What happened?” she practically screamed at Elijah, dragging them both inside before closing and locking the door.

  Charlotte looked down, and stared at the blood confused. She turned to Val and Elijah and spoke in a monotone. “I’m going to go shower.”

  Then she went up the stairs.

  “What happened?” Val asked him again.

  Elijah told her everything, his story cut with apologies and admissions of guilt.

  Once finished, she put a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’ll be okay.”

  “Do you think she’ll get into trouble for biting his tongue off?”

  Val frowned. “There is no way she is getting into any trouble for this. Don’t you worry about that. Pascal will probably want to … talk to … those boys himself.”

  “Will she be okay?” Elijah asked as Val poured them both drinks and invited him to sit across from her at the dining room table. “Something awful happened in The Slums.”

  “Did she tell you what?”

  “My mom told me that something had happened before Pascal got there, but not exactly what … I can sort of guess.”

  Val simply frowned. “The world can be a cruel place, Elijah. With too many men who think nothing of harming others in pursuit of their pleasure. Fortunately, your parents raised you right.”

  “Thank you.” Elijah wanted to talk about how terrible he felt for not doing anything, but didn’t want to make the situation about him. So he sat quietly with Val for a while. The longer they sat in silence, the more he became afrai
d that Charlotte might be breaking down in the shower. But Val was a grown-up and a therapist who knew what she was doing, so Elijah said nothing.

  Charlotte eventually came down dressed in a light blue dress with yellow flowers, smiling as if nothing had happened and she didn’t have a care.

  “Hey, Elijah, what are you doing here?”

  He and Val traded a baffled glance. He was about to respond, but Val rested a hand on his and answered instead.

  “How are you, honey?”

  “I’m okay.” Then, “Why is there blood on my shirt?”

  “Nothing to worry about.” Val squeezed his hand tighter. “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired, and … I don’t know. Fuzzy, I guess?”

  “Come on, let me make you both something to eat.”

  Charlotte sat next to Elijah with a smile. “What brings you by?”

  “He’s just stopping by to see you.”

  “Yeah,” Elijah lied, wondering why Charlotte didn’t remember what happened, knowing the reason couldn’t be good. “I wanted to see you.”

  “Thanks.” Still smiling as if everything was biscuits and gravy.

  Val made them chicken sandwiches and potato chips fried in bacon grease. The food was good and Charlotte was talking in a way that made things feel almost like a normal meal. But it wasn’t. And Elijah was finding it hard to pretend otherwise. The world had turned surreal, like a stage play where no one was allowed to admit that shit had gone terribly wrong.

  It reminded him of times at the dinner table when his parents acted like everything was normal, even though he could clearly tell that something was amiss between them. But they never told him anything. Maybe it didn’t concern him. Maybe it was politics and whispers. But a part of Elijah knew it was something else, a secret forcing them to put on a show.

  Whatever you do, don’t let the children know that something’s going on.

  He felt a wave of anger at Val for keeping this from Charlotte.

  But still, she must have a reason.

  Elijah wondered if his parents also had a good reason for keeping their secrets.

  The moment was shattered by a knock. Elijah worried that Hunter or Otis had told their parents who then told the Rangers about Charlotte attacking them.