Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (35 page)

Cree was on a console at the same time just a few feet away. She
seemed to have the same horror on her face. Before I had time to process
anymore the lights in the room turned out and all of the consoles shut down.
We had fallen too far into the rabbit hole. I walked over to Cree who was
crying.

“What did you see?” I asked. “Subject -22, what does that mean? The console
had pictures images of me as a child strapped to a table my body was torn
apart, opened up like I was being dissected.” I put my hand out and she took
it and I told her what I saw. I searched myself again under my new alias and
found similar pictures. Images of my childhood on Errikus appeared as well
as graphic images of myself as a child being torn apart plugged into several
alien machines. Aira stood in a corner with her gun drawn. She had found
more of the same horror when she searched her name. Aira was designtated
'Subject -19'.

“Why are our numbers so low and yours so high?” Cree cried. “I don’t know,”
I wanted to shout but it would have done no good so instead I tried to talk as
calmly as possible, “none of this makes any sense, the only connection we all
have to each other is we were born around the same time.” I paused, “what
are we?” “We are human and that is all that matters, meta, altered, doesn’t
matter, Lore was a cyborg and he was still human” “Lore also took commands
from a ship and killed Hayden,” I was shouting at Aira now. She had only
been trying to defend herself, defend us. “Wait, you were both users weren’t
you?” Cree asked “Yes,” Aira and I spoke in unison, though Aira never was
able to use the nexus she still passed the test given to us at birth, at least the
test we thought was given to us at birth. The test was designed to show
whether or not we had a gene that would let us interact with the nexus. All of
it was fake. There was no test. Our bodies were altered.

We knew Balkava had shut us out. We could hear drones torching just
outside one of the doors. We were being hunted again and now more
confused then ever we were in chaos. Each of us had hundreds of theories
running through our minds but none of it would matter if we didn't make it
out alive. The only person that had the answers was coming for us. We
steadied our rifles behind cover, Cree was ready with her pistol hiding to the
side of while Aira and I stood directly in front of the door. The drone broke
through and floating a few feet off the ground lounged for us. We fired shot
after shot of energy but it was Cree’s blaster and a shot to the back against a
small control panel that brought the drone to the ground only inches from
crashing into Aira.

We continued to make our way through the ‘Hall of Countenance” and into
“Hall of Elements” and last through the “Hall of Memoria” which depicted
carved images several feet high depicted the first invasion as well as several
others. Each room was small but full of magnificent statues fifteen feet high.
They had been decorated with heroes and warriors known by all and some
forgotten. Each was an addition made by elders, places they could seek
refuge and meditate.

Welcome to see the butcher.
Welcome to see the slayer,
Welcome to see the monster, the maker, the hand of Tiamat .

Welcome to the order of man.
You are but a face floating through the void.
An angel cast down by God.
You are a vessel.
You are a tool.
You are a puppet.
You are a harbinger.
You are Archaea with no muscle or soul
You are # 00110010001100100011011100110111 Error
Error
Error

Systems. REBOOT.
Immersion core. CHECK.
Hull. 66%
Life Support. 98%
Stasis. 32%
Error critical system failure inevitable.

01010011010001010101011000100000010101110100100101001100
0100110000100000010010110100100101001100010011000010000001
0101010101001100100000010000010100110001001100
Infection onboard. Protocol 17 initiated
Dear Anna,

I’m sorry I haven’t written you in so long. It has been years now. My last
message must have left you very ill. There is nothing I can say to you now that
will change anything I just want you to know I did what was best for you.

Cold squad disbanded shortly after Black Island. The Brit and the
Aussie helped me run. I had found something buried deep within the walls of
that pit and it showed me a vision - a world full of terrors. I had to hide what
I found for fear it would fall into the wrong hands. The best I could do was
delay the inevitable. I didn’t understand half of what I saw. To those around
me it was nothing more then a black rock but whenever I touched it I could
see worlds beyond ours. I saw humans living in massive indescribable
structures while other times I saw the past living life among tribes, castles,
and wooden ships. I saw the revolution, the Great War, the settlers and the
Indians. At first I wrote it down. I filled journal after journal until I could
write no more. I thought about publishing several papers as fiction but it was
pointless. They were the rantings of a mad man, a veteran lost in the trauma
of war.

Eventually I stopped writing. In Burma I joined a group of guerrillas.
It was the aftermath of the Second World War and there were still soldiers
and generals fighting even after their side surrendered. I took the life of
several in the name of peace. There were bandits too. Those that would rape
and kill for pleasure or reward all of which became my prey. I was a hunter, a
legend, and a ghost.

I saw visions, murders that hadn’t happened and I stopped them or at
least I did the best I could. I was still only a man. I could only move so fast
and do so much.

It was during a monsoon I slit the throat of a man that would have
killed his wife selling his child into slavery. It was that same night a strange
man found me. He was skinny and starved, a monk from an order called the
Archaeon. He had been tracking me for over a year. It was with his last dying
breath he told me about a group called the order, the Templars and their
splinter group the ‘Sons of Sol’. He begged me to climb into the mountains in
the north and deliver the shard he called nexus to a the monks there ensuring
they would protect it. I had no way to verify his claim. I recognized the name,
‘Sons of Sol’; I had seen it in a vision. They were unkind, power hungry, and
manipulative. The Archaeon seemed like the lesser of all evils and the
moment I left to the mountains my visions of an immediate future full of
corruption began to change.

I made my way up towards Mandalay. It was there I rested for year
spending a large amount of my time fishing. I could feel several side effects as
the artifact had started to have a horrible effect on my body. My real vision
had worsened and my body had become ragged and unhealthy. It was here a
family of merchants took me in and nursed me back to health. When I left
them I gave them the last of my earthly possessions.

I used what I had left to cross into Tibet and by the time I began
climbing the first mountaintop into the Himalayas I had long grey hair and a
beard that reached down past my neck. I wasn’t sure where I was going at
first but somehow I knew was I had to go north.

Several small villages welcomed me with open arms. It must have been
strange to them seeing an American like me more a vagrant then a tourist or
soldier. They gave me food, shelter and several spared supplies and clothing.
Not a single village had heard of the Archaeon. I spent ten years traveling
through the various provinces before ascending what my body told me would
be the last snow covered mountain I could climb. Sometimes the artifact
seemed to show me exactly what I needed to see. The warmth of a woman,
the smiles of children and families united in the aftermath of war. It showed
me worlds beyond imagination with life forms so unlike anything on Earth.
Planets were the sun shined purple rays of light and others planets were
gravity was so weak anything light would float away and children would play
games were they would jump hundreds of feet into the air over craters and
canyons. It showed me worlds without war. Other times I saw the darkness of
a ship. Children buried in ruins struggling for years to survive after a beast
tore through their home. Even these moments were not without hope. The
artifact seemed sentient as if it was speaking to me letting me know I was on
the right path.

When I
first saw the temple I was bewildered with joy. It stood above
and below carved into the side of a mountain. Parts of it looked like the
pyramids of Egypt smooth and angled like triangles while others resembled
Aztec ruins and ancient Tibetan monasteries. I had fallen face down into the
snow. I was ready to pass away and freeze. Already I could feel my limbs
numb and my toes fell through the broken soles of my shoe had begun to turn
black.

Several monks found me and carried me to their sanctuary. All along
the walls I could see carvings, paintings, weapons and relics were on display.
They spoke to me at first in their own language but within seconds they were
speaking to me in perfect English. They welcomed me and gave me a home.
They knew exactly who I was and never once did they try to take the artifact
from me. They spoke to me many times about the various futures I had seen
and praised me for the changes I had made through my subtle actions. Each
and every relic or weapon in the monastery was at some time something that
would have been used to rule over mankind. The sword or axe of a warlord
who would have enslaved thousands, the wip and spear of a mad slaver, and
the chains that were used to bind a man that would have assassinated a king.

The nexus had returned home to the Archaeon order. A place it would
remain safe for years. This was my last vision of Joseph Everett. He was
sitting not in a trench or jungle but in a chair. The room was dark and warm
aside from a small fire burning to his right. He drank bitter kava, the hot
water scolded his mouth. Years of fighting and running had taken its toll on
his body. The Archaeon order did there best to help him mend some of his
wounds with meditation, martial arts, and herbal medicine but the scars from
knives and bullets that laid across his back and sides never healed. He was
lucky nothing ever hit an artery though several were only inches away. All
these scars were only the beginning. Inside he was more scared then any
religion or medicine could fix. There are a few that say those scars are from
the war. They say the person you go in as dies and somewhere inside the
trenches or tall grass or behind buildings in the heat of a desert someone new
is born. Mind body even soul transform into something else. Something
remarkable and beautiful but sad and broken all at the same time; a sacrifice
some make so that others may live.

A new war, a cold war looms over the horizon. The world is changing.
Technology is making one giant leap after another and there is nothing left for
an old man like Joseph to protect anymore. There is no longer a reason to
run. He takes another sip of his kava. He is writing one last letter to Anna.
He has so many letters now, hundreds, maybe thousands. None of them will
ever be delivered. He writes to her having seen a future in which they were
together. The two of them had bought a cabin and lived with a daughter he
would never meet. It was a vision that only occurred once so long ago but it
was real enough to him. That small vision of the past kept him going for so
long. I could feel the tension in his muscles fade and his body relax. The
running has stopped. The light of the fire fades into darkness. Something else
seems to be happening. I can feel his fingers as if they are my own. I move on
then the other stretching them out. In the dim lit room he stares at his hand
wondering why it moved. In that moment I feel like I am a part of him. For so
long I have been hooked, living vicariously through him and his life as if it
where my very own. For one moment it seemed we were one in the same.

“Where the hell am I? Aira? Cree? Are you here?” No one answered. I
was surrounded by the dark, blindfolded with some kind of sac covering my
face with my hands tied to my side with rope. I felt the thin suede sac against
my mouth as I began to breath deeper and deeper. I had to stop myself from
hyperventilating. How long had my vision knocked me out this time? I
wiggled my way free in seconds and I pulled the black sack away. I lost Aira,
I lost Cree, I lost my weapons – we thought we were going to be climbing up
the elevator shaft but artificial gravity had other plans for us. The moment we
stepped inside we were falling upwards. At the top were several tubes barely
wide enough to fit through I curled into a ball and plunged inside and blacked
out.

I was sitting on the
floor in an operating room. Several bodies were laid
out on tables that sat turned upwards. “Where are you now?” I asked myself
smacking at my wrist PDA hoping it would show me something. It looked
like I was inside a hospital. A hospital I had seen a few times in my visions of
Joseph. It looked like a replica. I touched the wall closest to me and then
knocked and listened for the hollow echo. My PDA had showed the Erebus
in its entirety for a split second. The map had zoomed inside to a darkened
corner and the entire thing shut down in the blink of an eye. I was lost in
another room I wasn’t meant to be in. A place my eyes were never meant to
see yet somehow this room seemed like a stage, a set built just for me.

I began to walk around. Faster and faster with every step as I made my
way down an open hallway. One of the 'patients' I came across was covered
in a small blanket. Everything smelt like death and the air was stale. I felt like
I was in a morgue. I moved the blanket from top of the man’s head. There
was nothing there. The body seemed to vanish into thin air. I thought for a
moment I was inside a simulation. Did Balkava catch me and put me inside
my own personal hell?