Two Steps From Hell

Chapter 10: Fractured Future

"Jody, why are we in the future?" 

"A darkness has crept upon the world like never before."

"What darkness?" He asked, looking about the place. "I don't see any darkness. Just clear skies and a thriving city down below. If you'd asked me, the future hasn't looked brighter."

"Things are not always as they seem, Dad. The veil has been opened, and it cannot be undone," the little girl said, pointing upwards in the sky. "Look."

Essen then looked and beheld a woman covered in everlasting flames, free-falling down to the city in great travail, kicking and trying desperately to hold onto dear air. But even that was impossible for her. Instead, she continued to hurl her way down to the city at rocket speed. 

"Why is that woman burning?" He asked, overlooking the fact that she was also falling from nowhere. 

"Like many others in your time, this woman will become a victim of the darkness...the darkness that will take over the world. Though be careful of her, for this woman will prove to be a living thorn in your flesh and the sole reason for the destruction of your beloved city," the little girl forewarned as she and her father watched as the woman dropped like a nuclear bomb over the city; obliterating every skyscraper and wiping out the entire city from off the face of the Earth. 

A breeze of scorching heat then swept over them, burning only Essen in its passage. He felt the unbearable heat, but he was even more surprised that it didn't hurt him physically. Soon a mushroom cloud developed over the rubble where the city once stood. 

Essen reacted almost immediately in disbelief. His mouth couldn't close. "You're telling me that that's Beacon City?"

"With the current timeline still intact, yes. This will be the fate of your great city. Not unless someone changes it."

Immediately the landscape moved rapidly beneath their feet and thrust them forward to a different landscape in the form of a devastated facility located in a desert somewhere. A huge bottomless pit had formed in the middle of the facility.

"What happened here?" Essen asked right away, still shaken from what he had just seen.

"They freed the creature before his time," she replied stiffly, looking intensely at the massive hole in the building. "He was to remain imprisoned in the Abyss, be dormant for his entire sentence. However, that is no longer the case. The angels fear him, for if he was to awake, he would become a living plague upon all creation...an unholy man-eater with the strength of eons, power over the tormentors and the glory of invincibility." 

"Who is he?"

"Him who shall not be named. His name is reserved until in the last days. We are not in the last days."

"Is he the devil?" Essen persisted. 

"A devil he is not, but make no mistake. This beast, he's the destroyer of worlds. Far more destructive with greater authority and power than the serpent himself." 

When she said this, a thick black cloud of ash and cinder then spread contagiously across the sky from east to west, blotting out the sun. A haunting darkness followed. By means of the particulates, the air had become poisonous, killing every flying animal and most land animals that inhaled it. Brimstone and fiery hails soon fell from the sky and into the water bodies, killing all aquatic life and the remaining land animals that had survived the poisonous air. Then suddenly out of the thick black clouds came a gigantic foot which stomped hard into the land, sending a titanic shock wave across the entire globe, causing the mountains to tremble and the oceans to wail in agony. Essen became weak in his knees when he learnt later that it was a giant standing before him and his daughter, with one of his feet standing on land and his other foot in the ocean. His legs were very strong and muscular like a Roman soldier. His upper body was unfortunately hidden in the dark clouds that encapsulated the planet, but his fiery eyes could be seen piercing through the clouds from far above. His evil glare was locked onto Essen for some reason and it scared Essen right down to his very soul. Then with no form of warning, molten rocks came spewing down from the clouds above, presumably from out of the giant's mouth, and it burned and killed every living thing on the face of the Earth. 

"This is just the beginning," the little girl interrupted, catching her father's attention back. "He won't stop until he's able to walk on the backs of ten billion corpses." 

The dust had settled thereafter and the giant had vanished with it. There was nothing left, nothing but tens of thousands of dead bodies piled upon each other, forming mountains. Contributing to the body piles were people of every race and culture that had ever existed on planet Earth. Their crimson blood formed mighty rivers which rushed into lakes and seas, turning their colour into a venomous red.

"Why is he doing all of this?!" Essen protested sorrowfully when he saw all the dead bodies of men, women and children; the young and the old; the poor and the rich, heaped together like worthless meat. "These were people for heaven's sake. They did not deserve this. Some are children."

"He's fulfilling his purpose."

"This is his purpose...to murder women and children?"

"He's the destroyers of worlds, what else can you expect from a beast with that title? Nothing is beneath him."

"We have weapons, missiles and hydrogen bombs," he rationalized. "Why haven't we put an end to this monster already?"

"No mortal weapon can kill this creature. He's not of this world. He will never eat, he will never rest, and he will never stop." 

"That ain't fair. Angels; demons; and unstoppable monsters? Where is 'god' in all of this!? Surely he must be real for all this s**t to be going down," Essen asked disrespectfully. 

"I knew you would ask this question," the girl said, sighing. "But I warn you, there is no simple answer to what you want to hear. You see, since the passing away of the old covenant he had with man, he vowed never to interfere in the affairs of mankind until in the last day when he shall execute his judgement upon the world. And like I've said before, this isn't the last day or at least how it should be. The enemy, they have found a way to prevent the events foretold in Revelation from coming to past in the order that they should. They've inherently accelerated the end of everything in doing so."

"Let me guess, that isn't supposed to happen."

"No, it shouldn't. A certain hierarchy of demons, who are the Triumvirate of Terror, refused to embrace their destiny in the Lake of Fire. So they've worked tirelessly behind the scene, plotting and pulling the strings of men, who craved only for the abominable, until their goals were in motion. Science was the key all along and we had underestimated it gravely. Now the Earth belongs to them and we, both the living and the dead...the rightful heirs are damned for all eternity, away from our creator's presence...out of which we will all wither and die."

"Jody, this is very religious. I mean like very religious. Did I mention that religion wasn't my best suit? Why not show this to some fanatic who's obsessed with things like these?" 

"Because of this," the girl defended, revealing five specific bodies in a heap that was next to them. Proceeding in this order from bottom to top, Essen saw a handsome blond guy, who he hadn't seen before; the yellow assassin with a long, double-edged sword by her side; David; Ezra and his own body on top. Essen couldn't believe his own eyes when he had looked at his own mutilated corpse. He was sick to his stomach. "You and these people you see before you right there were the only ones who showed true courage and bravery in a time where there was none. You will lead this team of brave souls against the Darkness that shortly will be revealed in your time. But, you will also stumble and fall," she forewarned, sparsely making everything fade away into darkness until they had returned in the black void. 

"You say this, but I don't see the point of leading a team if we are only destined to fail," he doubted. 

"The future is not written in stone. Neither are the choices you will make. You can change it...you can change it all and prevent this future from ever existing. You're our only hope, Dad."

"Jody, why me? I'm just a simple man with a simple life. I don't know all this."

"You are special, Dad."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, kiddo, but there is and will never be anything special about your dad."

"You're wrong and I hope you'll realize that because if you weren't special, I wouldn't be here. The others...they see something in you, that is why they chose and risked everything to send me back to you. They say there is a special anointing on you and your friends that just might be the key to save us all."

"'My friends?' I haven't even met half of these people. If I'm to do what you say and embrace my destiny, how will I find them in time before this occurs?"

"Despite what you believe, your paths are all connected. They will find you when the time is right. Already I've seen that you've found two of them."

"Ezra and David," he thought to himself.

"You will no longer be alone, Dad," she reaffirmed, smiling. 

Right at this moment a bright bluish-white aura then appeared around her body. 

Essen immediately recognized it. "There is a light around you."

"I know," she said without looking. 

"You must go now, don't you?"

"Yes and so should you. Your friends are waiting on you," she replied, showing him an image into the real world of him flatlining on the ECG machine and Ezra getting an epinephrine injection ready to revive him with.

"Jody..." He called out when he saw that the aura was getting brighter. 

"Yes, Dad?" She replied, looking at him with her innocent eyes.

"Take care of yourself, you hear me? I will see you again, one way or the other," he reassured her with immeasurable confidence in his voice.

"Dad," she hesitated, looking down for an instant. "I wasn't supposed to share this with you, but it's about mom. You need to keep her close, because..." 

Then abruptly Essen was pulled away by a bright, shining light that prevented him from hearing the last part of her sentence. He immediately awoke on the table with Ezra holding a syringe he had just stabbed above his heart.

"Oh my, God. He's alive. He's alive! He was dead and I brought him back," Ezra said with complete astonishment. 

"You did it, Ezra! You saved him," David complimented with relief. "Welcome back to the world of the living my friend."

But Essen quickly sat up on the table, trembling with fear while rubbing his bare chess with his hands. 

"Easy there, buddy. It's gone. See? The confounding thing just burst into ashes," Ezra informed, trying to calm him down. "Probably it was spontaneous combustion that caused it to. Funny though, I always thought that was theoretical," Ezra continued, drifting off-topic.

"No, it's not that," Essen quickly replied, ending Ezra's nerdgasm.

"What's the matter then?" David asked.

"CERN," he replied with one word.

"CERN," David repeated, not having the full depth of what that word meant. After all, he had just joined the team unofficially thirty minutes ago.

"What about CERN?" Ezra then asked, bullying his way back into the conversation.

"CERN will mean the end of us all."

"Yeah, I tried to convince you of this the night you left, but you didn't believe me. I guess the time you spent on the run must have done a number on you. But never mind that. I'm glad you are on board now. Finally, we can get some work done around here. First starting with that flash drive I've been having trouble cracking---" 

"Kid, you were wrong."

"What was that?"

"It's not an alien invasion. It's something else...something much worst."

"And you know this how?" Ezra asked, now looking at him sceptically.

"I just do," Essen replied later biting his lips as a means to prevent himself from telling them anything further, especially of things he had seen in the future. Yet he had a determined look in his eyes. 

His companions, however, remained clueless and unsure about what he was suggesting.