Participants:
Also Featuring:
Scene Title | Genesis 19:25 |
---|---|
Synopsis | This isn't the ending you thought was coming. |
Date | July 11, 2021 |
Construction crews dot the mountains, floodlights turn stretches of night into day. The corporate machine lurches forward even at hours when people should be at rest. But their choice to operate under the pall of darkness, surrounded by their mercenaries, allows others to observe their movements.
Baruti Naidu lays on his stomach, the rough ground cold under him. Nights in these mountains are frigid, and that he can see his breath is proof enough he shouldn't be out here. Lowering his binoculars to reveal his luminous blue irises, Baruti shakes his head. "The logo says Pinehearst." The name means nothing to him.
"It's an American pharmaceutical company," says the man laying beside him, still watching the camp through a rifle scope. "They're looking to handle biotech work outside the States, away from prying eyes. Away from oversight and regulation."
"Why here?" Baruti asks, taking another look through the binoculars.
"Because they think they're safe. American soldiers roll down this country's streets, corporate interests in the nation's oil ensure they won't leave until its financially insolvent to stay. It's all about money." The man with the sniper rifle says confidently. "The illusion of safety makes otherwise brilliant people make reckless choices."
Baruti casts a spurious glance at the man. "Is that what this is, Nabu?"
Nabu looks away from the scope, his balaclava both keeping his face warm and hiding his identity. "I'm under no illusions," he says, resting his arm on the stock of the rifle. "This is an investment in Iraq's future." He says of the construction, drawing attention away from himself. "Pineheast won't always be here, and this far away from home? There's no guarantee when they pull out that they'll be able to pack all their luggage in time."
Wringing his hands around the binoculars, Baruti nods. "So we, what, pick their carcass clean once they are no more?" He asks, though he knows Nabu's strategies enough by now to understand the likelihood of that.
The "No," from Nabu surprises him. "Pinehearst is unknowingly laying a foundation for us."
"A foundation for what?" Baruti asks.
"Our next step."
Telmun is a building that exists in many parts. In some corners it is an industrial fabrication hub, constructing weapons of war based off of the designs stolen from Praxis Heavy Industries. In other parts it is an exquisite palace, a residence fit for a sovereign ruling-class of Expressives manipulating the fate of the world. And in its darkest reaches, it is a laboratory cutting across the bleeding edge of scientific discovery.
It is through white marble halls trimmed in gold that Kam Nisatta walks like a queen, a living god, representing the faith of Mazdak. She does not carry herself with this unflinching grace, however. Her simple black dress shows no desire of ostentation, her simple short-cut jacket covers scars on her arms. An interior pocket holds a secret.
“What is the nature of this meeting?” Kam asks of her escort, to which Claudius Kellar offers a wide, pearly smile.
“Ritual oversight,” Kellar explains as he leads Kam toward a wing of Telmun containing a number of sacred Mesopotamian artifacts. “You know how the old seers are, wanting to do things by whatever weird book they have.” He leans toward humor with her, rather than respecting the faith. He knows she doesn’t, what with being a prisoner in a gilded cage.
Kam does not give Kellar’s response any reaction as she squares her attention ahead and follows him down the column-lined corridor, past enormous Assyrian statues of Shedu. Kellar dips into silence, rightly interpreting Kam’s quiet as disdain. The awkwardly quiet remainder of their journey is, mercifully, short. Kellar pushes open a pair of reinforced glass doors leading into an exhibition-hall-come-temple, the walls of which are liked with fifteen foot tall cuneiform tablets depicting the history of the goddess Ishtar.
The path through the chamber requires navigating around one such tablet, fifteen feet wide and ten feet tall, etched with a relief of Ishtar herself holding the sun in her hand, flanked by a number of winged, lamp-holding Annunaki. Kam looks up at it with brows furrowed. Kellar reads that as disdain too. Also rightly.
On the other side of the tablet, they pass through another pair of glass doors into a room with a floor that rings like metal, has the color of hematite, and is divided into hexagonal tiles. In the middle of the room is an obelisk upon which the sie facing Kam shows a full moon and rows of cuneiform text.
“If you would be so kind as to wait here for just a moment,” Kellar says, briskly walking past the obelisk. “I’ll let everyone know you’re here.” Kam does not pay him any attention as he exits out the back door, closing it behind him as he does.
Meanwhile
Nearby
Text on a monitor changes to read LOCKED.
“Phase one complete,” a man in a lab coat says, typing a few commands into a keyboard at a terminal overlooking security camera footage of Kam in the room with the obelisk.
“Proceed with phase two.” Ra’id says, watching the proceedings from the back of the lab, arms crossed and expression tense. When the door to the room opens and Kellar enters, Ra’id gives him the briefest of acknowledgements.
“Our princess is right where you want her. We’re ready to proceed.” Kellar explains. “You sure the gas will work?” Ra’id glances to Kellar and nods.
Meanwhile, on an international video call, Cora Wenyi speaks up. «We cannot risk negating her, but the gas we have designed for this should cause unconsciousness within two seconds. By my estimation that is not enough time for her to rewrite her genetic code to make herself immune to the damage.»
“How’re we putting the genie in the bottle?” Kellar wonders. They’d cut him out of much of the planning for necessity’s sake, in the event Kam was able to glimpse his mind.
On the security feed, Kam slowly circles the obelisk, stopping on one of the panels. She reaches up and places her hand on the stone, looking forlorn. Recognizing it.
«Once we’ve incapacitated her, we’ll move her to the lab while we boot up Galatea. Then, once we have them in proximity, we’ll stop Galatea’s heart which will trigger the autonomic response she is host to, and with any luck it will attempt a transfer into Galatea.» Wenyi explains, and Kellar nods.
“And if this works, what, we wipe her clean and use the same bottle for our little Djinn problem?” Kellar asks Wenyi.
«Whether this works or not, we have to try.» Doctor Wenyi says. «But this should help give us time to make adjustments for the final process.»
Kellar takes a step forward to the security feed, watching Kam circling the obelisk again. “What do you think she’s doing?”
Ra’id shrugs. “It does not matter, Mr. Kellar. She was never a part of the plan.” He turns to the technicians handling the system. “Unleash the gas.”
Meanwhile
Nearby
Using the obelisk to hide her actions, Kam hunches her shoulders forward and withdraws a length of jagged metal from her jacket. Her fingers prickle with numbness on contact with the metal. Her hand trembles.
"We all deserve to be free." Damian had said to her.
He was right.
Meanwhile
Nearby
“Does she have—what the fuck is she doing?” Kellar asks, looking at the screen with confusion. Nearby, a console is beeping.
“Sir, gas vents are not engaging.” A technician alerts Ra’id with a quaver in his voice.
Ra’id’s attention is divided between the screen, watching Kam turn, holding something that looks like a knife in her hand. Then to the technician. “Ignite them again! Do it!”
“What the fuck is that?” Kellar hisses, “What the fuck does she have!?” He wheels around, shouting at the technicians. “What the fuck is she holding!?” There’s panic in his voice now, data points that were not there a moment ago coming together. The gas not working. Kam acting unusual. Kellar’s hackles rise. He walked right into this.
Meanwhile
Nearby
Kam Nisatta thrusts the jagged shard of the Kensei sword into her chest. She wheezes, exhales a wet, keening sound of pain and crumples to the floor. Her veins blacken in an instant, spreading from the presence of the knife shard. Her jaw trembles, eyes well with tears. Outside the room, Telmun security is swarming to the doors, rifles ready, waiting for the room to be unlocked.
Meanwhile
Nearby
“Unlock the fucking doors! Stop her!” Kellar is screaming at the technicians.
“I can’t, the security overrides think the room is flooding with gas! I can’t disengage the locks!”
Kellar turns to look at Ra’id. “What the fuck is she doing?”
Ra’id, clutching a length of tattered fabric in his hands whispers in Arabic. “«I don’t know.»”
Meanwhile
Nearby
Kam slumps over onto her side, heart racing, blood-covered fingers trembling in their grip around the metal shard she holds in her hands. All of the pain she has experiences over the last forty years, bleeding out of her. A lifetime of playing unwilling host to unfathomable horrors, a lifetime of living under the programming of an entity with a perspective on the world she cannot understand.
With the last of her strength, Kam squeezes her hand around that jagged piece of metal, and in that moment she feels something. She is not alone.
A man dressed in black takes a knee by her side, one hand on her shoulder and curiosity in his dark eyes. He squeezes her arm, then reaches down to hold one of her hands that tightly grips the sliver of metal partly embedded in her heart. The seething darkness bleeding out of her does not react to this presence, for it is not alive.
Gabriel nods, reassuringly, and helps Kam drive the sliver of metal the rest of the way into her heart, whispering:
“You can go now.”
Meanwhile
Nearby**
On the video feed, Kam Nisatta lays on her side along in a room. Screaming fills the room, an alarm has been triggered of a security incident. Klaxons are blaring. Ra’id and Kellar are transfixed on the screen, unable to answer Cora Wenyi’s cries for context as to what is happening.
They watch as Kam Nisatta’s body immediately blackens like a fire-burnt lot, splits as if baked under intense heat, and then begins to crumble away, leaving not even bones behind. A glittering piece of jagged metal is all the remains in the ashes, wisped with twisting fingers of smoke.
“Oh fuck,” Kellar whispers, his hands over his mouth. “Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
«What is going on!? Someone tell me what is going on!?» Wenyi screams over the video call. Kellar doesn’t answer her, instead he fishes for his secure mobile device, snapping it open and quickly keying in a message.
To: NABU
midnight eclipse
Then he closes the device and turns to Ra’id. Before he can ask a question, Ra’id drops the cloth he held in his hands and, briskly, runs for the door.
Meanwhile
Two-Thousand Miles Away
The Reach
Lappland, Sweden
Joy jolts up and off of the couch, knocking her teacup onto the floor. It shattered against the tile, scattering across her bare feet. Eyes wide, Joy clutches her chest and quickly snaps a look down to Simon Broome, preoccupied with drafting something in a spiral-bound notebook. Simon can tell something is wrong, and he wheels his chair closer to Joy.
“What’s wrong?” Simon asks in a weary voice, to which Joy has no answer, only stunned and confused silence. “Breathe,” he reminds her, “breathe.”
Joy slowly turns to look at Simon, and he can see that she is trembling in fear. And after what she tells him, he is too.
“Someone just destroyed the black conduit.”
Four Thousand Six-Hundred and Twenty-Nine Years Earlier
𒋀𒀕𒆠
(Somewhere Outside Ur)
𒅴𒂠
(Sumer, Mesopotamia)
Night
2608 BCE
Nanaja rubs her hand against her forehead as if fighting off a sudden headache. She can’t quite explain it, but she doesn’t feel like herself. She looks up at Ninbanda, then over at Inanna and Shara.
"«You see the future?»” Nanaja asks. “«You saw yourself saving me and Inanna and Shara before it happened and fulfilled that vision. You're… cutting yourself into pieces. Because of visions?»" She lets out a shaky breath, steadying herself before she looks back over at Ninbanda. "«I am grateful, but… it doesn't seem fair to you. How much of yourself will you give away before there's nothing left of Ninbanda at all?»"
Somehow, Nanaja feels like she understands. Like it’s personal.
“«As much as is asked of me,»” Ninbanda says with certainty. “«We are, all of us, instruments of powers higher than ourselves. I have lived my life by this flow, and if I am to take a piece of myself until I am no more…»”
“«…then that is my destiny.»”
Present Day
Dhi Qar
Confederated States of Iraq
The Entity is weeping.
Dropped to his knees amid a small patch of grass and wildflowers surrounded by nothing but desert sand, the Entity is weeping. AT first, he cannot even process the source of the grief, comprehend it. The pain is so profound that the only sound he can make is a keening sob, choked back by hiccuped breaths as he cradles his face in his palms.
A pleading, whining, “No,” is all he says between the sobs. The grief of a parent mourning a child, the grief of reliving this tragedy over and over again, countless lifetimes, countless children. The Entity doubles over and wraps his arms around his midsection and sobs.
Then, the grass begins to wither. Smolder. Blackens to a crisp from an intense heat. The Entity’s suit chars around the edges, and his skin cracks like the surface of hot tar, leaping with flames from within. His bones glow white hot like the surface of the sun, and the once-pleading “No,” turns into something else.
White-hot anger behind bright gold eyes.
A klaxon is blaring, Telmun security rushes down the corridor in columns, armed and armored to respond to a crisis they don’t even know. Ra’id is sprinting now, away from the klaxons, away from the security team, away.
There is a flash of light in front of him that turns six security officers into glowing cinders that drift weightlessly in the air. The Entity manifests from this light, eyes glowing like hot-forged steel. Ra’id can feel the palpable waves of heat radiating off of his body and he immediately drops to his knees, tears streaming down his face.
The Entity looks at him, his priest, and looks into his mind. Not a casual glance, not a skimming of surface thoughts done out of precaution, but a deep and comprehensive review of a lifetime of actions. The Entity’s eyes widen, and there is another flash of light. Ra’id does not even have time to scream as his body instantly calcifies and bakes from the inside, leaving him as a crumbling pillar of salt.
The Entity turns his attention deeper into the facility, raising one hand and dimpling space in front of him. He closes the distance between here and there like someone taking a breath and finds himself hitting a wall. A barrier. A barrier erected to keep him out.
He presses his hands to the glass door, inlaid with vibrating wires. Then, through the window, witnesses the body of Kam Nisatta, rendered to smoldering ashes. He sees that sharp fragment of steel inside the prison, beside an obelisk in monument to their enslavement, and he throws his head back to scream.
The Entity takes a knee and punches the floor, and in an instant rips through thirty-seven floors of Telmun, forcing it open like the hand of god parting the clouds at the start of judgment day. People exposed to the line of fire that splits Telmun down the middle are reduced to fine particles swept up by the still-functioning HVAC system.
Dropping into the rift he has torn in the building, the Entity weightlessly descends through the ruin, burning documents swirling around him, people halfway caught in the line of fire dragging the upper half of their bodies away from the sight of a betrayed god.
Klaxons still blare, lights flicker, and sparks shower from the rift in the facility. He would see their betrayal first-hand.
Meanwhile
The Municipality Directorate Building
Mosul
Confederated States of Iraq
“I understand,” Baruti Naidu says to someone on the other end of his phone. “I’m going to be heading up there later. “I have Tibby with me right now, yes. I want to take her out to ear before showing her Telmun.”
The voice on the other end of the line is understanding. Baruti smiles, possibly for the first time. “Of course, you as well.” As Baruti hangs up the phone, there’s a vibration that reverberates through the building, rattling the windows. Baruti ducks away from it, hands covering his head as if preparing for an explosion. But none comes.
Turning to the window, Baruti sees the sky darkening. In the north, where the ziggurat of Telmun cuts a metallic and glass triangle in the mountains, something is forming in the sky. A perfectly smooth sphere of blackness, surrounded by a twisting auroral spiral. Baruti’s eyes widen, his heart sinks into the pit of his stomach.
“Tibby.”
Sparks shower from an opening in the ceiling, past dangling cables entangled with the bodies of those who did not die in the blast, but fell and were hung on the cabling. The Entity descends through this tableau, touching down in a subterranean lab filled with cowering scientists in clean suits.
As they scatter, the Entity ignores them, walking toward a circular glass-walled room containing a single woman’s naked body laid out on a slightly angled table. As he approaches, he can feel the sonic vibrations coming from the filaments in the glass. This time he raises one hand, closes his fist, and shatters the wall from a distance. The fragments of the wall hang in the air as though gravity no longer holds court here, and as the Entity walks through they gently push away from his body. Some liquifying from contacting his superheated skin for too long.
By now the Entity’s clothes have entirely burned away, and he approaches the body as naked as she is.
Claire Bennet.
But not. She is an identical copy of her, save for the parts within this flesh that taste like plastic and gasoline to the Entity’s senses. Artificial. Pygmalion’s statue. The Entity looks a this lifeless body, waiting for a host, and snaps his fingers in the air.
Claudius Kellar appears out of thin air and runs straight into what remains of the wall in the lab. He screams, collapses to the floor, and turns only to feel a telekinetic force grasp him by the throat. The Entity turns, gold eyes burning like eclipses.
“Make this make sense.” The Entity demands. Fire glows in his mouth, heat ripples out like a dragon’s sigh.
Meanwhile
The Municipality Directorate Building
Mosul
Confederated States of Iraq
Baruti bursts through the door into the lobby of the Directorate Building. Security is on high alert, looking out the windows and up at the anomaly hanging over the mountains. Tibby, who had been waiting for her father in the lobby, sees a fear in his eyes she has never seen before.
“We have to go,” Baruti hisses, hurrying over to grab Tibby by the arm, “Now!”
"Flip." The young woman curses as people stir in the city and everyone catches sight of the anomaly which Tibby tries to scan, what is that? Just as she is squinting her eyes and tilting her head Baruti bursts onto the scene and is dragging her presuming to safety. The look on his face scares the hell out of her. "What has happened? Pa??"
“I don’t know,” is Baruti’s shaking, terrified response.
One look over her shoulder at the insane sight, "Merde."
Kellar paws at his throat, grasping to pull away the intangible hand clenching his windpipe closed. The Entity turns to fully face him and starts walking closer. “Speak.”
Kellar sucks in a sharp breath as the unseen hand around his throat relaxes. Things are happening too fast for him to process, to plan, to anticipate. He sputters, knows trying to stall won’t help. Knows the Entity can just rip it from his mind. It wants to hear him say it out loud.
“We fucked up,” Kellar rasps. “You fucked up.”
The sheer fucking audacity gives the Entity pause. He tilts his head to the side like a dog that heard a strange noise.
“You were never supposed—supposed to go into Monroe. That wasn’t part of the plan,” Kellar gasps, rubbing at his throat. “The prophets got spooked. You were acting—acting—” his jaw trembles, “unpredictable.”
The Entity slowly advances on Kellar, flares of fire leaping from cracks in his skin cooling. He looms over Kellar’s prone form, listening.
“We—we were already fucking with this technology. Stole it. They—they got this idea. Take you out of the picture. Put you in that until—until they could—” Kellar doesn’t want to say it. The Entity looks down, and snaps Kellar’s foot at an angle that shatters his ankle.
Kallar screams, writhing on the floor, back arching and teeth clenched. The Entity looks him in the eye, demanding. “Say it.”
“Control! They wanted to control you! A more predictable host!” Kellar screams. “You’re fucking insane! Monroe’s rotted your brain! Look at this? Look at this! You’re ruining fucking everything!”
There it is. There’s the truth.
“Do you have any idea how far this damage sets us back!” Kellar screams, endorphins, adrenaline, and pain form a cocktail that has his forked tongue lashing. “Because you had a temper tantrum! Because you can’t control your shit!”
The Entity drops into a crouch in front of Kellar. “Why did you kill Nanaja?” The Entity hisses.
Kellar has no context for the name, but it’s an easy enough context clue to put together. “We didn’t— we— we were just testing—”
The Entity breaks Kellar’s knee, shattering it in three places. He twists three fingers, pulling apart meat and bone with an unseen hand. Kellar’s scream reverberates off the glass walls. “We’ll wipe her,” the Entity parrots Kellar’s words back to him, seeing the selfish truth inside his mind.
“Do you know what the most pathetic part of all of this is?” The Entity says without a hint of humor in his voice.
“You were never going to control me.”
Then, he snaps his fingers.
Then, the end of the world begins.
Meanwhile
The Municipality Directorate Building
Mosul
Confederated States of Iraq
The black sphere that had formed over Telmun suddenly surges to life, ringed by a white-hot fire like an eclipse. Tibby and Baruti can see it in the rear-view mirror, see it clearer if either of them dared to look back. A finger of fire drops from the phantasmal eclipse, a finger of fire ringed with emerald green light.
Baruti presses the accelerator to the floor. The engine roars as he blows through a four-way intersection, crossing the bridge over the Tigris.
In the rear view mirror there is a flash of light. It is so bright that it turns evening to mid-day for a split second. It is an atomic flash that turns the mountains into water, the sky into fire, and the world to ruin. Baruti screams, shielding his face. Tibby takes the wheel, her optic anti-dazzle system leaving her able to see.
She steers from the passenger seat, and in the rear-view mirror, a mushroom cloud rises up from the mountains, an explosion larger and more terrifying than Tibby has ever seen in her life. The accelerator is pinned to the floor, the speedometer topping out at 110 mph. They race away from the blast, from the annihilation of Telmun.
From the end of all things.
Meanwhile
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Geographic Region Redacted
Marcus Raith flips a document over, looking over a dossier of several individuals. Eve Mas, Richard Ray, Elliot Hitchens, Francesca Lang, Agent Castle, Robyn Roux. He slides all of their individual files together and places them in a folder, then marks it with a black rubber stamp.
Killed in Action
Marcus shifts his attention to a man standing in the room, arms crossed over his chest. Hiro Nakamura looks down at the file with a deep frown cutting his expression. “This was always a one-way trip for them, wasn’t it?” He asks, to which Marcus nods.
“Their sacrifice won’t be in vain.” Marcus says with fanatic certainty. “They’re going to be heroes, immortalized in the new world that comes after we survive the HELE.”
Doubt clouds Hiro’s expression, but even he can’t see a way out of this web. “How are you so certain?” He wonders. “I can’t fault your strategy, you’ve been right every step of the way through this journey. I’ve only ever seen one person able to accurately predict the flow of events like that and Edward—”
“Edward Ray is dead.” Marcus says with feigned solemnity. “There’s no substitute for him, but an extensive information network like the OEI and the Edward there is a blessing.”
Hiro nods, suspicion receding like a tide. “The orbital shield,” he asks. “Do you think it will be enough?” Marcus looks up at him as if he doesn’t recognize what Hiro is saying. “To stop the HELE?”
“Ah.” Marcus says in that way he does when Hiro catches him in a half truth. But he’s quick to offer the full truth now. “That’s not what they’re going to find in Natazhat, or what they’re going to transmit over.” He explains, stepping away from his desk. “Stopping the flare won’t help us kill the Entity, and at the end of the day that has to be priority number one.”
“We must slay the Dragon,” Hiro affirms.
While he talks, Marcus pulls a mobile device out of his pocket, one that is powered down. Booting it up, he looks back to Hiro. “To that end, I’ve got somewhen I need to send you. I think we need to risk a rift for this one. There’s a piece of information I’m missing and I want to make sure this Charles Deveaux situation isn’t as real as Monroe was afraid of.”
HERMES Communication System
>ONLINE<
Hiro nods. “Interfering with the Company will be difficult now, especially with how broken…” Hiro dithers, seeing a look of confusion on Marcus’ face. “Is something wrong?”
Marcus looks down at the screen on his mobile device again. Making sure he isn’t misreading it:
Agent Oubliette
midnight eclipse
Marcus’ expression flattens. Color drains from his face. He pockets the device and looks up to Hiro. “Change of plans, we have to move fast.”
Hiro looks confused, if he could freeze time like he used to be able to, he could just look at the phone. But the knot of pain in his head makes that impossible. Things are too far gone now.
Marcus reaches into his jacket and pulls out a metal capsule, snapping it open and handing the scrip of paper within to Hiro. There’s a look of abject confusion on Hiro’s face. “Niki Sanders?”
“You owed her a debt unpaid.” Marcus says, speaking of things he should have no idea about. “To see her son?” Hiro looks back at the paper, brows furrowed. “After that, I need you to go to the Mendez loft on November 1st, 2011 and await further instructions.”
“Why?” Hiro demands to know, holding the paper. “How did you know about Niki?”
“God damnit Nakamura. We’re dealing with an enemy that can see forward and backward in time. This was all your idea. I see, you move.” Marcus fixes a one-eyed stare on Hiro. “This was your plan to save the world.”
Hiro swallows, audibly, then looks down at the scrip of paper again. His brows knit together and he nods, disappearing in a rush of air. Marcus slouches back against his desk, hands trembling. Retrieving his mobile device again, Marcus keys in a message.
To: Red Eyes
midnight eclipse
Then, spreading his palm open, Marcus encapsulates the device in a forcefield of emerald light. It shimmers, then contracts like a bear trap snapping shut. The forefield disappears, and Marcus drops the broken marble that was once his mobile device to the floor.
“Fuck.” Marcus hisses.
“FUCK!”