Hold On! - Tomorrow (A Sci-Fi Thriller)

by Peter Darley

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.” He stretched out his free arm and bent his wrist downward. The laser shot out and burned into the metal door of the chamber. He drew the beam around in a circle, but it didn’t seem to be damaging the locking mechanism. “Dammit! How does this thing open?”

  “Sshh. Keep your voice down.”

  He aimed the beam at the top corner of the door and drew it down along the side.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I’m cutting the damn door off.”

  The beam reached the halfway point. Smoke and the stench of burning metal filled the air.

  A deafening siren screeched, causing Amy to yelp.

  B.J. continued regardless. Then, as quickly as the sirens started, they ceased.

  “Look out!” Amy cried.

  He looked to his left and saw a hoard of hooded cult followers running toward them. “Amy, give me the gun and get behind me.”

  But it was too late. Clearly driven by terror, she aimed the gun at their pursuers and fired. A pulse-like beam shot out of the blue lens, but it was barely visible. It wasn’t like any laser B.J. had ever seen. It took down the guy at the front of the cadre, leaving a smouldering wound in his chest.

  B.J. took the gun from her, ushered her behind him, and aimed the two pistols at their attackers.

  They drew smaller, virtually-identical pistols of their own from under their cloaks.

  He tilted his head, mystified. “Where in the hell did you get those?”

  They fired a barrage of pulses at him. He felt the impact of the shots, but they didn’t penetrate the alloy shell of the armor. “You sons of bitches.”

  In retaliation, he fired multiple rounds at them, careful to avoid striking any vital organs. Seven of them crumpled to the ground, holding burning flesh wounds in their shoulders and legs. “You wanna know what I suggest you do about that, you holier-than-thou lunatics? Turn the other cheek, and forgive me!”

  With the realization the guns were lethal, he was determined not to become a killer. I’m not The Scorpion. He touched the right hip sensor and returned one of the guns to its compartment.

  Amy screamed. He spun around. More were coming from the other direction. Shit. Stretching out his free arm, he fired a jolt of sonic force, blasting them back over twenty feet. They landed in a pile at the far end of the corridor.

  He looked behind him again. The others who were still standing seemed to be retreating. He glanced down and saw Amy grasping his waist, trembling. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  He suspected the locking mechanism of the chamber door had already been compromised by his wrist laser. Returning to the door, he set the sonic force setting to ‘Impact’, and fired.

  The door blew open. An influx of energy knocked him and Amy to the floor. Electrical arcs rained across the corridor. B.J. stepped in front of Amy in order to shield her. “Amy, you have to get away from here.”

  She crawled away from the onslaught while he struggled to get closer to it. He knelt down and peered into the chamber. He spied the cloaking panels on the walls. With a shot from the pulse gun, he blew the first one out, and then the second.

  He fought with all of his strength to get through the force of The Censer until he could see one of the power generators. Relentlessly, he fired at it, creating a shower of sparks. The digital panels ignited and the fire spread rapidly. Persistently, he continued to shoot at it with the arcs lashing the armor.

  The electrical energy was beginning to weaken, giving him the opportunity to get even closer. He eased himself inside the chamber and took out the other two cloaking panels. Then he noticed another generator to his right.

  He struggled with everything he had to crawl farther inside. He tried the wrist laser but nothing happened. The E.L.F. has taken it out. He tried the pistol again and found simply raising his arm to aim felt like he had a thousand pounds of weight strapped to it.

  Finally, he managed to fire two shots. The pressure upon him suddenly lifted and he could move freely. The electrical arcs faded to mere sparks, but he still wasn’t satisfied. He took out the other pistol and fired repeatedly at the second generator until it exploded.

  The Censer fell to the floor from its rotating, mid-air suspension. B.J. backed out of the chamber, away from the flames.

  He turned back to Amy and horror filled his heart. The corridor was filled with over fifty followers. The pastor held her at the front of the crowd with a pulse gun trained on her temple.

  Exhausted, B.J. staggered toward them, infused with rage. “Let her go!”

  Amy gazed at him and wept. “Helping you is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. You saved the world.”

  “No, you haven’t, Brandon.”

  B.J. watched while everyone positioned themselves along the sides of the corridor and knelt. Only the pastor holding Amy remained standing. Mutterings of “The Prophet” echoed throughout the passageway.

  A tall man in a blue robe and a hood braided with golden hems, walked through the followers. “It’s time for you to finally learn the answer to a question that has plagued you all your life.”

  “And what would that be?” B.J. said.

  The man threw the hood from his head. “Who is Brandon Drake?”

  B.J. removed his helmet and stared at the man in mystified disbelief. The face he saw before him threw everything he believed to be real into question. Trust and hope didn’t exist. Only cruelty, tyranny, and insanity remained.

  He sank to his knees in devastation. “No, it can’t be you. Please, no.” He gazed heavenward in despair. “No!”

  Forty-Six

  The Prophet

  B.J. felt as though his soul had been torn asunder. Everything he’d believed in, everything he’d fought for, his country, and the very culture he’d served, had been nothing but lies. Sloane had put him through hell, but Sloane was seriously ill. No man could be held accountable for being afflicted by a disease.

  But the man he saw before him had no such defense. Where do I go from here? He looked up with venom in his heart.

  Vice President Gabriel Myers reached out to him. “Come, Brandon. We have much to discuss.”

  “I’m not interested in anything you have to say, you son of a bitch. You are a traitor to your country, and to humanity. You’re scum!”

  The station shook with a violent tremor, causing Myers to lose his footing. “By destroying The Censer, you’ve released an influx of energy into the station’s structure.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine by me.”

  “I know you, Brandon. You want answers.” Myers turned to his followers. “Put the fires out. Do whatever you must to contain the E.L.F. waves and stabilize the station.”

  They nodded in humble submission and hurried away.

  “Come now, Brandon.”

  B.J. stood with the helmet under his arm. “All right. But Amy comes with me. I’m not leaving her.”

  Myers glanced at the pastor. “Bring her.”

  “It’s gonna be OK, Amy,” B.J. said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’m not afraid of him. He has no power over me.”

  “Come,” Myers said.

  B.J. followed them along the passageway and into an elevator, his mind awash with uncertainty as to what he should do. He could break Myers and the pastor in half, but then he wouldn’t have the knowledge he so sorely needed. Myers said he hadn’t saved the world, so what else had they got planned? If there was any possibility of bringing these killers to justice, he knew he had to bear witness to their testimony.

  They exited the elevator, walked a few steps along another corridor, and stopped at an office door. Myers entered first, and then gestured for B.J. to follow.

  “Not without Amy,” B.J. said.

  Myers turned to the pastor. “It’s all right, Kade. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “As you wish, Prophet.” The pastor bowed and walked away.
<
br />   Amy ran to B.J. and held him while Myers closed the door.

  B.J. surveyed the interior. It bore the appearance of a control center with an array of monitor screens, sensor pads, and holographic cameras. Only a desk and a leather sofa at the far side of the room gave any indication it was an office.

  “Take a seat, Brandon,” Myers said.

  “I’ll stand,” B.J said coldly. “I’m particular about who I sit with.”

  “As you will.”

  “So, Myers, are you gonna tell me what this is all about? Why did you devastate so many cities around the world?”

  “The intention was to weaken the superstructure of the earth in preparation for the final cataclysm,” Myers said with sinister calmness. “That’s why we focused primarily on locations that were the strongest and the least likely to suffer earthquakes. You destroyed The Censer, so the original plan is no longer a viable option.”

  “But why?”

  The Vice President sat in his desk chair and looked upward. “Thirty years ago, I had a vision. A word of knowledge from God. He told me I was His prophet, that I would usher in the apocalypse, and eradicate sin from the universe. Afterward, I began my journey into politics and rose through Congress. Eventually, I had access to the facilities and personnel who would help me to fulfil the final judgment.”

  “Oh, so it’s not just Sloane. You’ve got it too.”

  Myers smirked at the sarcastic remark. “The senator’s behavior was unexpected, and I believed you were interfering in the divine plan. I didn’t think I had any choice but to put an end to your ally, Tito Mendez.”

  B.J. felt his cheeks flushing with rage. “You bastard.”

  “After your lover escaped from my people in Los Angeles, I received instruction from the Lord not to harm you. That’s when I realized Sloane’s actions were all a part of His divine plan. He was testing you.”

  “Testing me?”

  “Indeed. You are a selfless rescuer of the helpless and the powerless. You are driven by kindness and compassion, albeit in the pursuit of emulating whom you believed your father was. His life was a part of the divine plan, too.”

  “So, why lock me in a dark cell? What were you trying to do, Myers? Drive the ‘divine plan’ insane?”

  “On the contrary. You needed to be removed from everything you knew, even your own senses, in order to see the truth of who you are. A rich man must leave his wealth at the eye of the needle that he might enter into true sight. You had to see the direction you were taking was misguided.”

  “Misguided?”

  “Brandon, you are destined, by divine command, to become the leader of the Children of Tomorrow. You are to become an archangel.”

  “What kind of babbling bullshit is this? Why Children of Tomorrow? ‘Tomorrow’ is what you’re trying to prevent.”

  “There will be no tomorrow for the earth. Only the elect will survive the final wrath. Here, we are lifted up. This is the Rapture. Tomorrow will exist only up here in the heavens.”

  “Who the hell could follow someone like you?”

  “The disenfranchised,” Myers said with passionate conviction. “Those who have suffered at the hands of a sinful world. The homeless and the afflicted. Many of those who came to me were scientists. People who’d suffered terrible injuries in industrial accidents, only to be dismissed by their insurance companies.”

  “Like that pastor jerk with the one eye?”

  “Kade was a marine. He was injured overseas, and then disregarded by the Marine Corps.”

  “What do those creepy robes have to do with any of this?”

  “A return to the old values. Modesty and detachment from worldly trends.”

  B.J. considered Myers’ responses for a moment before responding. “So, all of your minions are just gullible, down-on-their-luck types. You preyed upon their emotional vulnerabilities with brainwashing. Is that why you call them ‘children’?”

  “It’s scriptural. You must be born again. God is your heavenly father. Come to the Lord as a little child.”

  B.J. roared with fury, “Of course. Infantilization. It’s really difficult to control grown-ups. Children are so much easier, aren’t they? So, how can you justify killing thousands of infants?”

  “Brandon, sometimes it is necessary to do the unthinkable for the cause of the greater good. God has employed the same sanctions for millennia. During the conquest of Canaan, He ordered all men, women, children and infants slain, that their vile bloodline would not continue to infect the earth. He promised to set the Medes against the Babylonians, and their infants would be dashed against rocks.”

  B.J. struggled to contain himself against the sadistic madness he was hearing. “Maybe you should find another role model, Veep. I don’t care what you believe. I just can’t understand how you could advocate it.”

  Myers shrugged casually. “Who are we to question the creator of the universe?”

  “I guess I’m just a terrible sinner who has an annoying habit of thinking for himself.”

  “Brandon, I checked in on you sporadically when you were confined to the lower quarters. I heard the conversation you had with your father.”

  B.J. clenched his fist under the humiliating blow of feeling violated. “You son of a bitch.”

  “You said you didn’t believe he was there, and yet you continued to talk to him. You said your mother believes you are his reincarnation. You don’t know what to think, so please don’t insult me by telling me you can think for yourself.”

  “Insult you? You subjected me to sensory deprivation, and you’re using my own hallucinations against me?”

  “The world will end tomorrow, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It is the fulfilment of prophecy. Of revelation.”

  “That’s bullshit. A wise lady once told me the apocalypse was supposed to have happened in the first century. It never did.”

  Myers chuckled. “Your Aunt Emily. Another apostate. Only those who walk in the spirit can interpret scripture clearly. The end is now, Brandon.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the world is filled with evil. War and corruption continues to reign. Men have become lovers of themselves rather than of God. Impurity, fornication, and pornography are rampant. The abomination of a man choosing to lie with another man is now a cause for celebration down there. The sanctity of marriage is continually being poisoned by their filthiness. This evil must be destroyed for there to be harmony in the universe.”

  “What ‘sin’ could be worse than global genocide? You think people can help being gay? Think of how they’ve been persecuted throughout the ages. Do you honestly believe kids got to thirteen and said, ‘What can I do today to get myself beaten up more?’ How can you say that’s a choice?”

  “They choose to give in to their sinful urges.”

  “You’re insane, and I’ve heard enough. You’re going down, Mr. Vice President.”

  Myers stood and faced him. “Just tell me, Brandon. Who do you believe yourself to be?”

  B.J. came closer to him, defiantly positioning his nose inches away from Myers’. “My name is Brandon Drake, Jr. My friends call me B.J. I am The Interceptor, son of the original Interceptor, who was a hero and a villain in his own right. I am who he was always meant to have been. I’m not his reincarnation. I am his legacy, his redemption, and today’s the day I pull it off.”

  Myers returned to his computer console and typed in a series of codes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m giving you the opportunity to say goodbye.”

  “What?”

  Myers gestured to Amy. “I cancelled the block on communications to official sources, which your apostate friend here forced me to put in place. It’s connecting you right now. Just stand here.”

  B.J. positioned himself where Myers had indicated and glanced at Amy. Damn, that poor kid looks terrified. Turning back to the console, he said, “So, what am I supposed to be looking at?”

  Instantly, a holog
raphic transmission of Jed Crane appeared. B.J. could make out the Oval Office in the background.

  “B.J.?” Crane said, surprised.

  “Uncle Jed?” Out of the corner of his eye, B.J. noticed Myers’ fingers working frantically on the console panel.

  “No!” Amy ran forward and reached for the Vice President’s hands, but she was too late.

  B.J. shot forward and placed his palm against Myers’ chest. “What have you done?”

  “It’s started.”

  Forty-Seven

  Global Terror

  Five minutes earlier.

  “You can’t believe this, Jed. Gabriel? I’ve known him since Harvard.”

  Crane understood President Jennifer Braithwaite’s disbelief perfectly well. He’d had the same reaction when he first read Amy Fairchild’s message in Woody Schuster’s home. “I have to believe it. How else would this girl have known the exact date B.J. received the call?”

  “How do you know both the call and the message weren’t hoaxes from the same person?”

  “There’s always that possibility, of course. NASA is investigating the Cronus Space Station via satellite as we speak. I’m expecting a call any—” Jed’s Z-Watch beeped. “This is it.” He answered the call and a hologram of the ageing, gray-haired NASA director, Brad Wharton, appeared above his wrist.

  “Jed, we’ve got something,” Wharton said.

  “What, Brad? What have you got?”

  “The Cronus Space Station showed no readings whatsoever. It was simply junk floating around up there, the same as it’s been for the last seven years. But then, the boys noticed a power reading that seemed to come out of nowhere. It’s strong, Jed. Real strong.”

  “What do they think it is?”

  “They said it was electromagnetic frequency energy, but—”

  The hologram shimmered as though the signal was failing. “Brad? Brad, you still there?” Jed moved his position in the room, but there was no improvement.

  And then B.J.’s hologram appeared. Jed’s spirits soared with relief that he was still alive. It looked like he was in some kind of control center. “B.J.?”