Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  Aubrey had never been a religious man. He had long considered those who leaned upon the crutch of blind faith to be crippled by far more than mere dogma. He had believed them to have forgone real wonders for mythical ones, the genuine joy of discovery replaced by the hollow promises of religion. But now, faced with the might of nature’s ultimate uncaring creation, he felt a lifetime of scientific confidence abandon him. Aubrey became what all human beings were before the fury of nature’s wrath: feeble, inconsequential, helpless.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he whispered into his own chest as he lay coiled upon the floor. ‘If there’s anybody listening, forgive me.’

  A silence followed that seemed to last forever, and then suddenly he heard the hiss of hydraulics as the inner hatch opened. In a moment of morbid fascination, Aubrey peered into the darkened maw of true oblivion and then screamed with all of his might as a roar filled his ears, the gruesome song of the black hole both as deep as eternity and yet howling like a banshee as every free atom in the outer chamber was yanked toward it. The moisture in the chamber condensed into a writhing cloud of vapor and zipped toward the black hole as the latent heat energy was dragged instantly from his surroundings.

  Everything else happened in a flash, every millisecond seared into Dennis Aubrey’s last moment as he realized a terrible truth: he was lying with his feet pointing at the black hole. At this range and with everything happening so fast, he would literally see and experience everything before the solace of death embraced him, for his eyes and brain would be the last parts of him to enter the black hole. Even before the first electrical impulse from his brain reached his limbs in a futile attempt to turn himself around and meet his death head on, he lost the ability to move. In an instant, as the inner hatch fully opened, Aubrey’s skin and body became immobile as the temperature began plummeting toward minus 270 degrees.

  The sweat on his skin turned to ice crystals as all of the air and the heat of his body was vacuumed toward the black hole at tremendous velocity. Aubrey’s gaze registered tiny flares of red light as countless atoms of nitrogen, oxygen and methane were dragged in their billions across the event horizon and into the black hole. A flare of plasma appeared around the black hole like the rings of Saturn as other atoms on less direct trajectories were sent into rapidly decaying orbits around the black hole’s circumference, accelerated to the speed of light and heated to thousands of degrees before vanishing beyond the event horizon.

  Aubrey felt as though he were encased in a steel suit. The blood deep beneath the surface of his skin began to boil as though toxic acid were seething through every vein and artery in his body. His scream, long lost along with the air, lay frozen in time on his face as his lungs turned to stone in his chest cavity. His glasses shot away and vanished, instantly melted, into the disc of plasma orbiting the black hole.

  Dennis Aubrey was lifted bodily from the floor of the outer chamber and flew toward the gaping black hole. The inner wall of the tokamak chamber flashed past as he caught a fleeting glimpse of faces pressed against the glass portholes, watching him with expressions of mute horror.

  Aubrey saw the wall of the sphere glow as the entire universe beyond the black hole was shifted into the blue portion of the light spectrum. He had the briefest impression of individual atoms in their countless millions being dragged from his body as it passed through the event horizon. There was no pain, for his body was already too senseless to register any meaningful physical sensation, the nerves and pores either rock solid with cold or melting in the storm of plasma energy seething within the sphere.

  His legs, closer to the black hole’s singularity than his head, were stretched away from him in a nanosecond by the imbalanced gravitational field, tremendous tidal forces tearing his atoms apart as their nuclei and orbiting electrons scattered into the fiery plasma.

  With his last moment of awareness, before even his eyeballs turned to solid ice, Aubrey glimpsed the outside world twist and spiral in a violent blur of colors as the light was distorted by the black hole’s immense gravitational field, wrapping around it in dense coils like a light spectrum floating on the surface of a bubble.

  In a blaze of energy, Aubrey crossed the event horizon. The kaleidoscope of colors turned suddenly bright blue and then plunged to black as Aubrey realized that no matter where he looked he saw the same thing: the oblivion within the black hole’s dark heart, the singularity, where all paths inevitably led and where all histories were irrevocably erased.

  And then there was nothing.

  64

  June 28, 20:24

  Ethan stared in horror as he saw Dennis Aubrey’s body plunge into the black hole, his face a screaming mask. He glimpsed the scientist’s body stretched to oblivion around the circumference of the black hole before the man’s agonized face turned a deep red as the light was shifted deep into the spectrum.

  Then, he simply vanished from sight.

  The writhing coil of energy around the black hole seemed to recede as it was gradually consumed, and then the interior of the chamber fell dark once more, punctuated only by the occasional flares of plasma reaching out to the chamber walls.

  Ethan felt his head yanked backwards as Olaf pulled him away from the glass.

  He caught Lopez’s eye as they turned to face Joaquin once more. The tycoon’s face glowed with malice.

  ‘Now then,’ he began, ‘which one of you will be going next?’

  Ethan glanced at Katherine Abell, who looked as though she were on the verge of a breakdown. She stared with wide eyes at the chamber where Dennis Aubrey had been crushed into oblivion.

  ‘Is this what you are?’ Ethan asked Katherine, ignoring Joaquin. ‘Is this what you’ve become, too?’

  Katherine blinked as though refocusing on the here and now, and she shook her head vaguely. Joaquin walked across to her and yanked her arm, turning her toward him.

  ‘Don’t listen to them,’ he crooned. ‘They’re not worth it, not worth the worry.’

  ‘Is Scott Bryson not worth the worry?’ Ethan asked Katherine. ‘He saved your life.’

  Katherine’s jaw trembled as conflicting emotions warred with each other. She looked at Joaquin.

  ‘This is wrong,’ she whispered finally. ‘This is all wrong.’

  ‘This is necessary,’ Joaquin insisted, ‘for the greater good of us all, of all humanity. They’re going to die, Katherine, I’ve already seen it on the camera. There’s absolutely nothing that you can do to prevent that.’

  Katherine shook her head.

  ‘This, all of this, it’s not about us or about humanity, is it?’ she said. ‘It’s about you and how much power you can have over people.’

  ‘No,’ Joaquin snapped. ‘It’s not about that at all.’

  ‘Then let them go, and take responsibility for your own actions instead of blaming it on the needs of a humanity that has no idea what you’re doing. Let them go: it’s what your father would have done.’

  Katherine’s challenge fell out of her lips almost of its own accord, and as Ethan watched he realized that Joaquin had again been cornered. The tycoon opened his mouth to answer his wife, but nothing came forth. Katherine grabbed his arms and shook them as she spoke.

  ‘It’s the right thing to do and you know it,’ she said. ‘It’s what Isaac Abell would have done. He would have seen the error of his ways and tried to prevent any further loss of life.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Joaquin snapped.

  ‘No?’ Katherine challenged. ‘Well, you tell me: would your father have released these people or would he have executed them?’

  Ethan watched as Joaquin ground his jaw in his skull for several long seconds, staring silently at his wife. And then he sighed and shook his head as he turned away from her.

  ‘Katherine, I’m afraid it’s just too late for that now.’

  ‘You mean you don’t have the guts,’ Katherine snarled, ‘because you’re not a fraction of the man your father was.’

  Joaquin whirled on th
e spot and his fist whipped out, cracking Katherine back-handed across the cheek. She sprawled onto the floor, her hair falling over her face. Ethan tried to leap to her aid but Olaf’s huge hands held him in place like a vice.

  ‘You know nothing of my father,’ Joaquin shouted, pointing down at his wife. ‘Nothing!’

  Katherine slowly struggled to her feet and stood before her husband with her chin lifted in defiance.

  ‘I’m sure that he was man enough never to have hit his wife.’

  Joaquin clicked his fingers at two of the IRIS soldiers standing nearby and they hurried forward to each take one of Katherine’s arms in theirs.

  Joaquin looked at her for a long moment and then shook his head.

  ‘It didn’t have to be this way, Katherine,’ he said. ‘But you leave me no choice. Put her in the chamber. Put them all in there!’

  Ethan was turned and manhandled toward the chamber’s outer hatch with Lopez alongside him. Katherine looked at them pleadingly as they were shoved toward their doom.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  Ethan did not respond, instead searching desperately for some way to break free of the giant man holding him. The sphere was surrounded by cables and wires but none of them looked close enough that he could grab it, and the clinical neatness of the chamber and control platform meant that there were no weapons or implements he could use to fight his way out of trouble. The IRIS soldiers’ weapons were all held at port arms and the troops were careful not to let anything get within his or Lopez’s reach, all of them far too professional to make such a basic error.

  There was, he concluded, nothing that he could do. He glanced at his watch. 20:26.

  ‘We’ve got about twenty minutes before this is all over. Any smart ideas?’ he asked Lopez in a whisper, as they reached the outer hatch.

  ‘Pray?’ she suggested, her dark eyes flicking left and right as she sought an escape. Her dark skin seemed to have turned a few shades paler. ‘Beg for mercy?’

  Ethan shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think praying will help, and I’m not giving up my pride to that asshole.’

  Olaf released him and walked to join Joaquin near the chamber’s portholes. The tycoon called over to Ethan as his men opened the outer hatch door.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr. Warner. I’d have imagined that a man of your caliber would put up a better fight, but it’s too late now. You’re literally out of time!’

  Ethan ignored Joaquin and watched as the hatch beckoned, flickering intermittently as plasma energy flared violently in the chamber beyond. Katherine was shoved inside by one of the soldiers and fell onto the metal floor as her legs failed her. Lopez was turned by a soldier and aimed at the open hatch.

  ‘Any last words, Miss Lopez?’ Joaquin asked.

  ‘Yeah, as it happens,’ she shot back. ‘Two of them. Fu—!’

  The soldier shoved her into the hatch before she could get her parting shot out.

  ‘What about you, Mr. Warner? Anything that you’d like to say?’ Joaquin called, Olaf standing beside him.

  Ethan looked at Joaquin for a long moment, aware of all eyes turning to see what he would say. Bright flares of energy flickered from within the black hole chamber’s narrow portals and reflected off Joaquin’s features.

  ‘Yeah, there’s something that I’d like to say,’ he replied. ‘I’d like to point out something that your father would have understood about this device, but that you don’t. Just because you’ve seen into the future doesn’t mean you know what’s going to happen next.’

  Joaquin laughed.

  ‘Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case right now, does it? It looks like your future is assured!’ He turned to Olaf and clapped the giant on his shoulder as both men laughed.

  Ethan was about to be prodded into the chamber when Joaquin suddenly stopped laughing, his face contorted in confusion as he looked up at Olaf. The huge man stared down at the tycoon.

  ‘What is it?’

  Joaquin stared at his own hand before speaking.

  ‘I clapped you on the shoulder,’ he uttered, ‘just like in the video footage Dennis showed us.’ Joaquin looked up at Ethan. ‘From when you’d died in the chamber.’

  Ethan said nothing, watching as Joaquin’s mind struggled to comprehend what was happening.

  ‘Dennis must have tampered with the footage,’ he mumbled to Olaf in disbelief. ‘He didn’t spin the timeline on the footage forward to show us their deaths, he span it backward, to show us his own. Damn it, he must have edited the footage somehow before showing it to me. But then he must have known that he was going to die. Surely he couldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Charles Purcell did it too,’ Ethan said to Joaquin. ‘It’s called personal sacrifice for people that you care about, something you wouldn’t understand.’

  Joaquin screwed his face up in confusion.

  ‘But why would he be willing to die if he knew that I had won and—’

  Ethan smiled quietly. All of the IRIS troops were watching him now as he spoke.

  ‘Because he saw something else.’

  Joaquin shook his head. ‘That’s not possible!’

  It was not Ethan who replied, but a deep and murderous voice that thundered across the dome from the entrance hatch.

  ‘Surprise, asshole!’

  Ethan leapt sideways out of the grasp of the IRIS soldiers holding him as they all whirled to see Scott Bryson standing inside the bulkhead with an M-16 assault rifle cradled in his grip. Without any further warning, Bryson opened fire and a cascade of bullets hammered into the IRIS troops, instantly cutting several of them down. Bryson turned toward Joaquin and Olaf as he fired, chasing them with gunfire.

  The hail of rounds smashed into power cables, computer terminals and ventilation channels as Bryson forced Joaquin and his remaining men away from Ethan and Lopez. Sparks showered down across dislodged metal panels as clouds of steam billowed from ruptured pipework filled the air as they dashed for cover.

  Ethan hit the deck hard as Bryson’s rounds slammed into the torsos of the two men closest to him, hurling their bodies like rag dolls into the side of the outer hatch. Ethan took shelter behind the hatch door and yelled in to Lopez and Katherine.

  ‘Get out of there!’

  65

  June 28, 20:28

  Lopez leapt out of the hatch, dragging Katherine close behind her, and they both tumbled down alongside Ethan behind the nearby wall of the control platform.

  Ethan jumped to where one of the IRIS soldiers was writhing on the ground, his chest a bloodied mass of impact wounds. Ethan grabbed the man’s rifle, looking down at him and recognizing the face of the young man who’d spoken to him earlier. His once-defiant eyes were now pinched with fear and he coughed a thick drool of blood from his lungs.

  Ethan scurried across to another fallen soldier as Bryson laid down heavy fire on the troops now sheltering behind the computer banks on the opposite side of the dome. Ethan picked up the dead man’s rifle and then dashed back to where Lopez was crouching.

  ‘Where the hell did Bryson come from?!’ she shouted above the crackling gunfire.

  Ethan squatted down alongside her and handed her one of the rifles.

  ‘You didn’t really think he’d take a walk did you?’ he replied. ‘After what Purcell told us, I thought it was prudent to hide our assets. There were television cameras at the airport: I figured that if Joaquin saw Bryson leave, it might give us a chance.’

  ‘How did he get down here?’ Katherine asked.

  ‘The pressure suit on his boat,’ Ethan yelled back. ‘It’s just able to operate at this depth. The Free Spirit is too small for IRIS to track from down here, and they’d never be able to see Scott’s pressure suit. It was the only way to maintain surprise.’

  Lopez cocked her rifle. ‘Now what?’ she asked.

  Ethan shifted position onto one knee and fired off two shots across the heads of the IRIS soldiers.

  ‘We need to get Purcell’s came
ra and then get the hell out of here,’ he said. ‘Cover Bryson. I’ll work my way around the far side and flush them out!’

  Lopez nodded and opened fire across the dome toward Joaquin and his men as Ethan leapt up and dashed across the open ground into cover behind the black-hole chamber’s outer hatch.

  The IRIS troops fired on Lopez’s position, and Ethan flinched and ducked his eyes away as a volley of rounds smacked into metal panels near his head and ricocheted into the control platform. A shower of sparks fell like glowing rain onto the deck of the dome as the rounds smashed a computer monitor, and flames from an electrical fire started licking at the edges of the panel.

  Ethan looked up at the enormous black-hole chamber as a new and unexpected horror breached his awareness. Bryson did not know what was contained within the chamber, and an electrical fire could cause havoc down here. Ethan peered around the edge of the hatch, and saw Bryson spraying bullets crazily across the IRIS position. One ricochet into the chamber’s panels would be all it would take to cause the machine to go into meltdown, or maybe a shot that took out the power supply to one of the magnetic-field generators, destabilizing the black hole.

  Ethan looked up at the control panel to his right. If the camera was anywhere, it would be there.

  Ethan took aim and fired a salvo at the IRIS troops to keep their heads down, and then sprinted out across the open deck toward the control panel. Lopez saw him move, and shifted her aim to a position just behind him, firing again on the IRIS soldiers. Ethan felt the shockwaves from her bullets thumping the air behind him, and glimpsed the rounds smacking into the metal panels shielding Joaquin and his men.

  A return volley smashed a pair of hard-drive units near Ethan as he vaulted up onto the control panel and hurled himself down into the walkway behind it. The unforgiving metal deck slammed into his shoulder. As he rolled he smacked the side of his head on the back wall of the walkway, a spray of sparks and plastic fragments raining down around him.