...the devil is in the details...
"Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present."
It was six minutes to midnight on Rhodes. On the first floor of the enormous building called Abner Donaldson Memorial Research Center, also called Omega Complex, the excitement of another intruder was slowly dying out. Years ago, they had a similar situation, where a thief broke into the building, marched down the hall as if she owned the place to the Cipher System mainframe, and extracted the entire genetic code of the evil Omnian alien Arcanza. Just now, a man dressed all in black except for his piercing blue eyes had marched through the front door and into the elevator, then disappeared. The overhead announcement was informing the EON agents, employees, and civilians that the situation was secured, and for all they cared it truly was.
Far below, however, the situation was anything but secure. Inside the hidden chamber known as Archetype, the place where the OmniTech and ShadowTech Ability Bands had been preserved for years, and where more recently the Seal of Meridian-Omega had been concealed, an impossible reunion was taking place. Amber Donaldson, who barely less than an hour ago learned the secrets of her origin from her most hated enemy, was face to face with her dead friend. Her dead twin brother. But he stood with confidence, staring at her with an inward and penetrating resolve, and yet there was still something that felt utterly wrong. Amber could not feel the old feelings she used to feel around Craig. There was no humanity coming from him. And it was frightening.
"You're going to move out of my way," Craig told her sternly.
She could not reason why she answered, "No."
The young man nodded gently, as if he were expecting to meet resistance from his sister, and he politely told her, "Then I'm sorry." He leapt into the air, performing a three-hundred-sixty degree kick, executing the swift and sudden attack with perfect timing and precision. His foot easily broke through the Zenith Aura protecting Amber and slammed into her chest, knocking her onto her back and forcing all her breath out of her lungs on impact.
A flood of energy burst forth from the Shadow Morpher and Amber was instantly in an offensive stance once again, breathing with no problem at all, every sense heightened to a level beyond any ordinary woman. All around her she could feel a prickling sensation, and deep within her mind she was being encouraged by some unidentified voice or presence, cheering her on, prompting her to fight with everything she had. Charging forward, she thrust one blade straight out and brought the other one curving around from the right side, just in case her opponent chose to dodge. Without flinching, Craig remained absolutely still. The Shadow Blade pierced his stomach, sliced through his innards with razor sharp precision, and a loud snapping sound accompanied the destruction of his spinal cord a single heartbeat before it exited his lower back. "Oh my God!" Amber sobbed as she continued tumbling forward, collapsing against her twin brother's corpse. "What have I done?"
Firmly a hand pushed her back to stop her from freefalling, while the complimentary hand effortlessly took the handle of the impaled Shadow Blade and yanked it free from its fleshy sheath. Craig only smiled as he examined the bloodstained weapon with curiosity. The entry and exit wounds were already gone.
Amber was unable to continue fighting after the shock of what was happening. "Who are you?" she demanded. There was a lot about Craig she admitted to not knowing, but of the things she was certain about, one of those was that he was not immortal. This person imitating him, on the other hand, apparently was, which meant putting up a fight was going to be futile. She needed to conserve her strength.
"I'm your twin brother," he answered simply, "sort of."
"Sort of?" replied Amber. "I don't understand."
Craig began walking forward, and as he did, his voice began to echo off the chamber walls, filling the air with the terrifying sound of his quiet tone. "While you and your friends spent your last few years happy, Krista Mercuric was gathering information. She broke into the building above us and stole a copy of Arcanza's genetic blueprint, his DNA sequence. She salvaged the ruins of Neo Twilight City and retrieved the original paperwork used to genetically build Michael Tracer twenty-five years ago. And she acquired a certain vial of blood, once the property of the Rapture Holder Salodis, that contained the DNA of Craig Hopwood. Using these three sources, the expertise of the late geneticist Ronald Cain, and the intricacies of two substances called pseudoine and pseudocioal, Krista created clones of these three men, each with an intrinsic factor called an Eternity Helix, granting them not only unholy power but virtual immortality as well." By the end of his speech, Craig was standing next to her, his hand placed carelessly on her ShadowTech Ability Band. He had walked straight through the Zenith Aura without the slightest hesitation. "Now do you understand?" he asked.
Something strange was happening. Seconds ago, the Morpher around Amber's left forearm was burning as it filled her with energy, vitality, clarity. But now it started to grow cold and, when once it pumped her with life, it felt like the hand of death clinging malevolently to her. She could feel herself de-morph, but refused to end her struggle here, and pushed forward, screaming.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Craig lifting the pilfered Shadow Blade, ready to strike her down. Following her gut reaction, Amber blocked the attack with her own blade, just fractions of a second before it would have severed her arm. "You don't act like him," she panted. Maybe it was being so far underground, maybe it was a culmination of everything that happened in the past few hours, or maybe it was something Craig just did to her, but she was becoming exhausted. Utterly, uncontrollably exhausted. Even those five words took her breath away.
"Maybe I do," he answered with a sinister tiny grin. "Maybe your Craig always had a dark side waiting to come out."
She felt her knees turn to jelly, and had to use what remained of her depleting strength to steady herself from keeling over. Craig launched into a brand new series of attacks, and with each parry the disturbing sound of steel against steel send a lightning bolt of pain through her, spreading a wave of electricity as far as her teeth and toes. It could have lasted mere seconds or days on end, but her attacker finally stopped and, with the brief moment of clarity he presented to her, Amber had an idea. Using the last iota of her power reserve, she use the Silhouette Steal ability to wrench her second Shadow Blade away and disarm him. The weapons evaporated in black smoke.
Craig looked at her with an interested glare. His features were beginning to change ever so slightly and, for a single heartbeat or two, Amber would have sworn she was looking in a mirror. Was he able to shapeshift? Would he change his image to look like her to throw Amber off even more?
"You..." she began to say, but any strength that remained was used up. Amber fell down, landing against one of the columns, with her body sprawled out in a terribly uncomfortable position. "You..." It felt like she was about to choke, but was unable to, and instead she gasped to continue breathing. And that cold sensation was beginning to spread. She did not have to be a genius-level professor like Professor Donaldson to know what that freezing current meant.
"I..." Craig responded, walking nonchalantly past her. He grabbed the cloth-covered metal box and carried it to the center of Archetype where he positioned himself directly in her line of vision. His eyes were different now, wild, thirsty for something. Even that spine-tingling smirk had changed from before; it possessed a dark quality before, but now it was pitch blackness, the kind of hopelessness and emptiness she imagined not even floating endlessly through space would create.
"I..." he repeated. Very delicately, the evil clone of Craig Hopwood lifted the cloth embroidered with the five-diamonds-in-a-diamond insignia of the Omni Rangers, and by merely touching it caused it to instantly catch aflame. In no time at all, the only thing left of that cloth was a drizzle of ashes drifting to the floor. He opened the metal box and removed the item within, letting the container fall to the ground with a loud crash.
Craig lifted the Seal of Meridian-Omega with both hands and held it above his head, watching it sparkle, infatuated with the way it reflected all of the light like a prism. The image on the Seal was a single hand grabbing for a ball of light, with all of the light escaping between the fingers of that hand. As soon as it was exposed, Amber could feel her heart accelerate to the point she fully expected it to burst forth from her chest and take off running. There was a feeling of fear that instantaneously permeated the chamber or, for all she knew, maybe that feeling had permeated the entire world. The entire universe. Because she knew what was next, and if only she could move, if only she had one little bit of her own life force left...
Craig snapped the Seal into two perfect halves. Almost immediately, both halves crumbled into smaller pieces, then into tinier fragments still, until the Seal was nothing but billions of molecules completely broken off from one another. "I...am the true Resurrector!" Craig screamed as loud as his voice allowed. His laughter plunged a universe into hell.
One minute past midnight, the Abner Donaldson Memorial Research Center began to shake. At first it was thought to be an earthquake, which sent everyone into a panic, until it began to push the limits of what even Mother Nature could do. The trembling became violent, persistent, almost alive in its all-encompassing rage and desire for destruction. People began scrambling over one another to escape outside, but once they were there, they were met with only darkness and a cold death-filled night. Nobody could hear anyone else sobbing because the noise of the vibration was overpowering.
Inside, on the fifth floor, Gabriel Kaisa was the first to realize this was not nature's doing. He caught the attention of Brittany, Rebecca, Alexander, and Patrick, and motioned with intent towards the young woman laying unconscious in the Infirmary bed.
Even higher above that, swirling in the abyss of the night sky, the Ethercell was growing just as violent as the ground below. Superheated red and yellow streaks of lightning laced through the smoky clouds, criss-crossing with loud booms and crashes, sending sparks shooting across the earth. Along the skyline there were explosions that sent giant columns of flame into the emptiness beyond the horizon. Liquefied fire surrounded with electric fields began seeping through the gray smoke, sending a rain unlike any ever seen before to fall on the humans unlucky enough to still be alive below.
A black hole appeared in the twisted tendrils that composed the Ethercell, and a beam of bright white solid light emerged from that very hole. It traveled straight down, burning through anything in its path, starting with the seventh floor of Omega Complex. One by one the levels of the mighty man-made fortress evaporated away, completely annihilated by the massive ray of whiteness, including the lives of the ordinary men and women inside. Finally the light began to burn away the ground itself, digging ever further downward, until it burst through into Archetype itself.
The beam entered Craig Hopwood's body. And as it did, there was a ferocious roar, the loudest sound ever heard on Earth, that ripped over the mountain, beyond the islands, across the seas, and eventually around the world, a single man's voice touching every ear on the planet at once. That streak of light became even brighter, transcending the color white to some new color that could not be described because it was impossible to look at without being instantaneously blinded.
What remained of Omega Complex exploded in flames, spreading fiery debris in every direction, and the enormous beam of light slowly faded away, leaving a neon green afterimage that no one left alive would ever see. Surprisingly, from the center of the destroyed building, there was movement. It was Craig Hopwood, floating, slowly moving up, pieces of burning structure bouncing harmlessly off of him. His eyes contained that brighter-than-white light now, and it was shining as he stared at the sky with a blissful look plastered on his face.
On the other side of the world, the three Spires fell simultaneously, and the invisible barrier surrounding them shattered of its own accord. Standing together in the center of the Gates of Hell, now swung wide open to encompass eternity, Arcanza and Michael both wore satisfied smiles. "This is it," Tracer observed.
"The Dark Rapture," sighed Arcanza, "at long last!"
Both the Destroyer and the Betrayer vanished, carried away to Mount Attaviros, but it was not finished yet for the rest of Twilight Legion. Inside the Spires, one by one, the Legionnaire men and women began to burst aflame, dying where they stood. Upon realizing what was happening, they began to experience a horror and fear beyond any known to living man before now. Valerie, a member of the Legion for only two years, was cremated in two seconds, her ashes intermingling with the others who had been duped, manipulated, betrayed and destroyed.
And when the Rapture was over, there was dead silence.
At the former site of Omega Complex, the Eternal Demon took its first look at the universe after three thousand years.
It was destruction. Nothing but chaos, termination, finality. And it filled her to bursting with a deepset sadness and depression, not because it had happened, but because she had survived. In fact, it looked like she might be the only one who survived. As she crawled out from under a piece of rubble that must have weighed three times her own weight, the first thing that struck her was the singed air. It smelled a lot like burning leaves, and when she began breathing it in, it felt like her lungs were on fire. At least she could breathe now, dirty air or no.
Looking up at the sky, Amber could see three human shapes floating a far, far distance above them, and a world that was wholly unrecognizable. The night sky was the color of blood, there was a fog created from ash and dust, several cracks opened up into deep crevices in the earth's crust, there was fire and wind pushing up through the waves of the Mediterranean Sea. It was like a crazy dream, or a movie about the end of the world, except it felt real. Felt real because it was real.
"The end of the world," she moaned. She lifted the ShadowTech Ability Band to eye level and examined it thoroughly. Sure enough, it was unscratched, just like her. "If you had enough power left to protect me," Amber said, angrily, scolding the device even though she knew rationally it was beyond insanity to expect an answer, "why didn't you use that power to stop him instead? I could have stopped him. I could have. I could have." She heard someone crying, and simply assumed it was herself, repeating, "I could have stopped him instead of saving myself..."
The crying was getting louder, and Amber's thinking was becoming clear enough to realize that she was still composed. Well, not really, but composed enough to fight her urge to flop down and weep until she died and left this painful life behind forever. Renewing herself quickly, Amber pushed forward slowly, calling out gently, "Hello? Who's there? Hello?"
"Ah...Amber?" a small voice answered back. "I-is that really you?"
"Brittany!" Amber exclaimed, just as she began to make out a small shape huddled beneath an overturned wall, or maybe it was a floor, or a ceiling, whatever. "Yes, it's me! Hang on, and I'll get you out of there."
Apparently she was not the only one suffering from fluctuating emotions, because instead of replying, Brittany laughed. The wall she was underneath suddenly began to radiate with a yellow light, and it vanished instantly, allowing her to stand up and look over at Amber standing a few yards away. "I think we were all able to morph and escape," Brittany explained, "but there was so much confusion and so many things happening I'm not sure if everyone else...if they survived..."
"We have to believe they did," Amber told her reassuringly. How stupid! She scolded herself for reverting back to that optimistic girl she used to be, but this was how her mind was handling this crisis. It was innate, natural. It was Amber being herself. The end of the world, what a terrible time to be herself. "Let's keep searching."
They stood in mid-air, hovering almost a mile above the ground, facing one another, basking in the moment three millennia in the making. He was Arcanza, the diabolical alien who had rose up from meager beginnings in order to annihilate an entire planet, the "Destroyer of Life and Hope." He was Michael Tracer, the impossibly manufactured child of two pseudoine-infused human who for a very brief amount of time wielded the power of the cosmos itself against his mortal enemy, the "Fallen Angel of Betrayal." He was Craig Hopwood, the corrupted genetic duplication of the universe's savior who had succeeded where the other two had failed in breaking the third and final Seal of Hell and opening the Ethercell, the door connecting this universe with all parallel and perpendicular ones, the "Resurrector of the Eternal Demon." It had finally happened; the Trinity of Darkness was complete, and the promised day was here.
Craig's eyes flashed intensely, and without explanation he began to melt away, liquefying, leaving only a cloud of pitch blackness where he once floated. The cloud began to take on a new shape. It was morphing into an enormous, dark, evil entity, shaped a bit like a human, but then again not really, and it was obvious this new being was powerful. There was a sensation about it, a prickle that burrowed into even the back of Arcanza's brain and paralyzed him with fear. And, no doubt about it, the entity was alive.
The form began to condense once again, back into a more solid human form, but now it took on an obvious feminine quality. It became a beautiful woman. Her dress was all black except for crimson and gold symbols etched along the hems. Pure, unblemished skin, with no hint of makeup, gave her the essence of natural beauty, complete with the scent of sweet fruity perfume. Blonde hair spilled down over her shoulders, framing a face with so much familiarity it was as though it were burned into everyone's subconscious memory years ago. There were two sparks buried within each of her silver eyes, one of which was a gentle blue cloud and the other of which was that burning, blinding white-hot light. Even though she was not very tall, the way she was composed gave her the appearance of being the largest and most important person ever born. Perhaps she was.
"I recognize you," Arcanza said with a laugh.
"Do you?" the woman answered back in an amused tone.
The Destroyer nodded contently. "You have taken the form of the deceased High Lady of Omnis, mother of Seraide and Oriquin, grandmother of the Hopwood and Donaldson half-breeds."
"Although I appear to you as Janoa," replied the woman, "bear in mind that I am the Eternal Demon, brought back to life by the Trinity of Darkness, here to do nothing less than reshape reality itself, and fulfill my eternal desires to become the mind of God." Janoa lifted her hand and, in response, a terrible burst of supercharged lightning tore down from the sky, lashing the ground and setting some of the rubble below afire. "You are free to conquer this and any other worlds you wish, as long as you remember whom you serve, and what your purpose is."
Michael bowed respectfully, even going so far as to lower his eyes, but the painful look on his face clearly indicated some hesitation. "Almighty God," he began, "my predecessor, the original Michael Tracer, has already tried that—merging with Meridian-Omega—and failed miserably, defeated by a clueless mortal boy."
In turn, Janoa only laughed, placing one hand on Arcanza's shoulder and the other on Michael's, intrigued by the notion that his first words would dare to challenge her destined calling. "Please, do not address me as 'God' quite yet, although the time will soon come when you may." She motioned toward the turbulent skies above them and whispered intensely, "The path to acquiring the power of God requires much more power than that burnt-out old rock. It will require the rebirth of Meridian-Omega...and unlocking what lies beyond it."
Their place of refuge was what appeared to be the ruins of Cecil's executive office, identifiable only by the shards of stained glass, strips of velvet cloth with burnt ends, and the tattered remains of a once-breathtaking Gauguin painting. Below them, the ground still vibrated, but with much, much less force that it had before. The noise level had dropped considerably, but there were still explosions, peals of thunder, and the groaning of the earth in the background that occasionally drowned out their voices. Of course, there was not much to miss, because more than one of those voices were silenced by the terrible events of the last...five minutes? Ten minutes? One hundred years?
"I can't stop," Alexander moaned, tearing another piece of green fabric off his sleeve, "I just keep freaking out. I don't know what to do. What will we do?"
Patrick swallowed to clear his throat, before replying, "I see two possible choices. First, we charge up there and start kicking ass with any power we have left. And second, my personal choice, we just give up and teleport someplace far away from here, like New Omnis."
"I won't abandon the people still alive," Gabriel said, the only one with a voice that was not cracking under the stress of the situation. Of course, his watery gray eyes betrayed his true feelings. "As an EON agent, I have a sworn duty to protect..."
Rebecca snorted, "Protect what? Or who? Today alone, Arcanza has killed everyone we fought so hard to save..."
"We can't pick and choose who we are responsible for," the young man answered back quickly and firmly, then let the issue drop altogether. He stood up and stretched out, obviously anxious about something.
Sitting off to the side, Brittany was turning Amber's Shadow Morpher over and over in her hands, examining it thoroughly. The activation coins were set carefully off to the side, but it still looked dangerous, like they could fall through the piles of rubble if the smallest of tremors decided to return. She was frowning with uncertainty—not a good sign. Occasionally, her eyes would shift to see if Amber was still paying attention to her then, when Brittany realized she was, she would turn away quickly.
Finally deciding his shirt was ripped too much, Alex reached over and grabbed Amber's hand, holding it tight. "I want to say I'm sor..."
"It's too late," Amber told him for the third time in the last ten minutes, "so quit apologizing and wasting your breath." She pushed his hand away and climbed to her feet so she could walk over and see how far Brittany had progressed in her investigation.
Without looking up, Brittany sensed she was coming over and reported in a critical voice, "No response." She reloaded the coins and lifted the Morpher with both hands. "I'm certainly not the expert on these matters, but to me, this thing is dead. There's no power left at all, and I don't think it's collecting power from us anymore, either. ShadowTech is broken."
Amber looked up into the darkness, staring at the three shadowy figures floating high above the ruins against the backdrop of a burning sky, and felt heartbroken. One of those figures was Craig's doppelganger, of that she was absolutely certain, and deep down she knew that her life as the Black Ranger was over the instant he laid hands on her Morpher and made it go cold. Now, she was helpless, useless, even a hindrance to her teammates. Resigned, Amber took back the device her biological father had created and put it back around her forearm. Even if it did not have a purpose anymore, it would be a memento to the family members she would never see again. But still a question ate away at her subconscious. How had she survived an entire seven-story building collapsing on her if the Black Ranger powers were gone?
"Everyone, listen up," Amber ordered them. She shared a quick reassuring look with Gabriel, then continued, "although I didn't see it firsthand, I'm certain the Eternal Demon was able to escape its prison."
"You are right."
The voice startled her. In fact, it startled everyone, because it came from an area hidden by a giant upturned cement fountain. A cloud of smoke also contributed to rendering the space around them impossible to see. From the haze, an unexpected visitor emerged, carrying the unconscious-but-living body of Krista Mercuric in both arms. Gabriel's jaw dropped as the source of the voice revealed itself.
Cecil Mercuric did not look happy.
"Agent Kaisa, come over here and let me use the OmniTech," he demanded.
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Rebecca. "What the hell is going on?"
Alex blinked back his shock. "Cecil, are you...?"
"Be careful!" Amber warned, grabbing and stopping Gabriel as he began to obey his Executive Director's wishes. "Twilight Legion has figured out how to clone people. This might be one."
Of all things, the Cecil lookalike rolled his eyes, muttering to himself, "I do not have the time or patience to put up with this asinine behavior. If the Eternal Demon realizes we are still around, it is going to slaughter us where we stand. Kaisa, get over here now so I can teleport us all someplace safe."
As he pushed Amber away, Gabriel smiled comfortingly and assured her, "It's alright. I know, for sure, it's really Director Mercuric. And he's right about needing to leave right away. Then you can decide how to proceed." Then, with every bit of confidence left in the world, he detached his Omni Morpher and handed it over to the ghost of his predecessor.
There was a spark in Cecil's eyes that instantly came to life. He was like a child who had been asking for a bicycle for Christmas for the last several years and had finally found it sitting under the tree. Without dropping his sister, he grabbed the cold metal with his left hand and held the device tightly, but his attention kept snapping back to the trio of people above them. Gabriel Kaisa saluted and then brought his hands behind him.
Everything turned red and existence itself shattered into infinite pieces.
When the intense brightness began to fade, Amber could make out large shapes and darker colors, and she could sense her friends still someplace close by. The first figure she identified was Brittany, who must have already gotten her sight back because she was gasping, "Incredible! Where are we?"
"A little place in the mountains Craig and I used to come to all the time," explained Cecil and, judging by the volume of his voice, he was very close to them. "You used to be able to see the entire city of Ivory Glade from here."
Rebecca seemed to already know, because she was saying to someone else, "Oh yeah, they used to joke about this place called the 'Parapet of Power.' This must be it. Pretty impressive."
Finally the stinging in her eyes began to ease up and Amber was able to look out over the sad desolate scene over the edge of the mountain that, yesterday, had been her hometown. It was a wasteland, all scorched and ripped apart, with a bright illuminescent irregularly shaped center. The smell was overpowering, a blend of chemical scent mixed with strong burning and something rotten or spoiled. From the corner of her eye, she saw Brittany pull the collar of her shirt up over her nose.
"Follow me," Cecil growled. He carefully set Krista down on the ground, attached his Ability Band around his forearm, then walked over to a red stone wall. There was one thing out of place with this particular natural formation, the presence of a relatively small rectangular black plate embedded into it. Cecil placed his hand on the panel and, in a matter of seconds, a doorway opened up directly beside it, exposing stairs leading downward. "It will be safe down here."
"Your last underground bunker certainly wasn't," snorted Amber.
He completely ignored her, returned to his sister, and picked her back up so fragile and tenderly Krista never stirred once. Then, he hurried through the entrance and began walking down.
Alex was nervous, Patrick was confused, and Amber felt conflicted, but the others eagerly fell in step behind him. With a final worried look amongst themselves, they silently chose to follow, hoping they were not walking into yet another deadly trap. Not that it would matter to Amber if they were.
"One matter remains, then we can depart," Janoa spoke calmly. She clapped her hands together and there was a ripping sound that shot horizontally around her. A cascade of feathers began falling from the sky like rain, most of them white but a select few of them very black and ominous. One at a time, those black feathers morphed into creatures: human-like in some features, demon-like in others, but very clearly vicious warriors. Their eyes literally burned, the hollowed out sockets gave way to tiny flames dancing like candles. Each monster had a pair of wet, black wings, sharp and razor thin, more like a bat than a bird.
Michael examined one of the new arrivals, his forehead creased, but something about them was apparently unimpressive. "What are these?" he asked.
The creature Michael was looking at instantly realized it was being analyzing, and it struck out to defend itself. It lashed out with a clawed, three-digit hand, slicing a deep gash into the Betrayer's face, sending a spray of blood into the air. Before the surprised young man could react in pain, the assailant sprouted a long spiked tail that whirled around and wrapped around his opponent's foot, pulling him down.
"Son of a bitch!" Tracer finally screamed. He grabbed the creature's head and, summoning strength deep within, tore it from the rest of its body. There was a fountain of black gore that lasted for two, maybe three, seconds, then another twisted head popped out from where the first had been torn away. "Get away from me," he snarled.
The Eternal Demon gave a very small, very content smile. "These are my most agile and reliable servants," she explained. "I call them Hosts. Like you, they too are immortal."
"The Hosts of the Spheres," Arcanza gasped as he rubbed his hand along his chin. "I heard about them in Terra Memoria from the Starborn himself. Sure, they are immortal, but they do have one weakness..."
"A weakness it took the Omnians years to discover," laughed Janoa, "whereas I need them now for only a few hours." She turned around to the assembling crowds of approximately thirty Hosts and called out to them, "Listen, children! I want you to seek out the Power Rangers, wherever they are, and return to me with all of their OmniTech Ability Bands."
The Hosts began to gurgle and spit, actions that must have passed for acceptance of the Demon's orders, because they flew off in several directions at once. Even the Host who had assaulted Michael departed immediately. "Huh," Michael mumbled, fingering the wound across his face and wondering why it was not healing itself.
"I want you two to accompany them and make sure they complete this task." Janoa turned back around and stared at them with an expectant gaze. "What I need are the five OmniTech devices. What I want is those idiots finally dead. See to it."
"It started when I tried to break the barrier around the Spire," Cecil explained.
He was sitting in an easy chair, pulled up right beside a couch on which Krista was resting comfortably, her chest moving up and down in labored breathing. Sometimes her closed eyes would begin to twitch, too, and they could tell she was experiencing something profound. Whenever she looked too uncomfortable, a red glow surrounded Cecil and Krista calmed down once again almost right away.
Rebecca had the second easy chair, but Amber, Brittany, Alex, and Patrick were all seated on the carpeted floor looking up at them. Back in the shadows, Gabriel leaned against the rock wall with his arms folded, appearing half-asleep but also half-wired, like an addict going through withdrawal. Cecil's Sanctuary was warm and comfortable, thanks to an underground hot spring, and perhaps best of all completely sealed off from the crumbling world outside.
"The blowback knocked me out, but while I was in that coma, I discovered the secret that has been hiding right under our noses all along."
"Another?" Amber asked, feigning surprise.
"When you say all along," Rebecca asked, paying no attention to her friend's sarcastic commentary, "what exactly do you mean?"
Cecil gave a half-smile and lifted his Morpher up. "This secret." The red glow surrounded him again, bathing the entire under-mountain hideaway in eerie light. "OmniTech is alive."
"Bullshit!" laughed Patrick.
Alex laughed, too, adding, "That's ridiculous."
"Alive...like us?" Brittany stammered. She seemed to take the news in stride; maybe she knew beforehand, or had an inkling of some sort somewhere along the way.
"Sort of," answered Cecil. "They think just like we do, but obviously they cannot move or have any of our normal five senses. Also a bit like a plant. It is clear in my head, but difficult to explain."
On one hand, Amber was intrigued by this information, but on the other hand, it was of no concern whatsoever to her, especially since her own Morpher was dead and useless now. "How did you learn that while you were unconscious?" she wondered.
He seemed relieved to get back to his story. "While I was out, I met the living entity inside my OmniTech, interacted with it, conversed with it. To me it only lasted a few hours at most, but when I woke up, three months had passed and I was completely beside myself, out of my mind."
"So...you lost your mind..." Alex whispered, his sick green eyes staring at his own Morpher as if it were a poisonous snake wrapped around his arm. It was obvious what he was thinking. Obvious and probably true. "And your OmniTech took over."
"I broke through the barrier. But what I found on the other side was the truth about my sister which, as you can imagine, completely shattered my faith and scrambled my mind. I lost control...and OmniTech took over."
Amber nodded as he spoke, trying to piece his recounting together into something understandable to her. "That's when you became suicidal and tried provoking us into killing you. So, are the OmniTech entities friends or enemies?"
"Both," Cecil replied sadly. "They want to help us, but the way they work it by antagonizing us, reading our mental and physical state and augmenting it in an opposite manner. Let me see...for example, if I became desperate to protect someone, OmniTech would respond my unlocking incredible destructive force. They were designed as devices to make up for human shortcomings. So, when I called out with my all heart that I wanted to save my sister, OmniTech's natural reaction was to compel me to destroy myself."
"Fine, fine, whatever," Amber exploded, wiping away the tears that had started to form in her eyes as he continued speaking, "but all I want to know is how you survived. How did you live when I...when the Titan...crushed you?"
Cecil frowned, but it was an obvious attempt to hide a smile, which made Amber even more furious for an honest answer. "After I took off the Morpher, I regained my sanity. After the Titan caught me, I climbed out, seconds before the hand tightened."
"But that scream..."
"You crushed my foot pretty bad," Cecil told her with a scolding voice. "It took damn near three months, living here, to heal."
Suddenly things began locking into place, one at a time, like an easy Tetris puzzle falling perfectly in Amber's head. "You knew!" she screamed at Gabriel. "That's why you were so nice to me while I was locked up. Everybody hated me, Cecil, and to you this was all just a ruse? For what? What could be so valuable to you it was worth my suffering and resentment?"
"While I played dead, I was able to contact New Omnis," he answered, now completely serious. "Soleron promised to send reinforcements to help us in a surprise attack against Twilight Legion, but I never in my wildest dreams predicted things would deteriorate so far so fast. I suppose, when it comes to religious fervor, game theory is worthless."
Rebecca started to say, "Now..."
He held up his hand and stopped her from finishing her thought. "I am so sorry. I feel guilty beyond description, and it weighs heavily on me, as if everything that has happened is all my fault. It feels like all of you hate me, Amber most of all, and if our roles were reversed, I guarantee I would feel exactly the same way." Cecil raised the Omni Morpher and his eyes narrowed. "But, this I promise to you all, I am going to move Heaven and Earth if that is what it takes to stop this chaos once and for all. If it costs me my sanity, my soul, or my life, I intended to destroy the Eternal Demon and prevent his evil plan from being fulfilled. This is my covenant to you."
Cecil's eyes suddenly widened, and his head tilted back in a very unnatural way. His back was arching back, as well, and his hands were trembling as though he were being electrocuted. His knees folded and he fell down to a kneeling position. Rebecca sprang up from her chair, as did Brittany, both of them terrified as Cecil's convulsions continued.
The Eternal Demon walked through the debris, the trash and rubble, all the remains of the building that was destroyed by her resurrection. Slowly Janoa proceeded, examining it piece by broken piece, working out the design in her mind.
"This should do nicely," she concluded. Raising her hands, the Demon held them, palms facing downward, and called forth her otherworldly powers.
One second it was a chaotic mess of unusable garbage. The next second everything had rearranged into a new construction, something massive and beautiful, defying all possibility faster than most people could breathe. The remains of Abner Donaldson Memorial Research Center had converted themselves into a large spaceship with enough space to hold thousands of people but the intend to hold only one. Janoa motioned, and the entrance opened, admitting her into the ship.
"Apocalypse Instant," Janoa named the ship, "you will take me to my final confrontation."
It was sixty minutes past midnight on Rhodes.
It was merely hours before the end of the world.
Original Publication Date: 29 April 2005
