Death.
It hung over our heads like the stars above, etched into the Celestial constellations that make up the night sky.
And not a soul could escape their inevitable fate.
Except the few brave enough to discover.
The few clever enough to create.
Few strong enough to survive.
This is the wake of destruction.
Resurrection.
This is our path.
This is.
The Aftermath.
****
~ Skylar ~
"Our absolute worst fears have become a reality...and the entire planet as we know it will have to pay the price." a man whispered in panicked bursts of terror though the lens of the camera this recording was being filmed on. I failed over and over again to take my eyes off of his trembling body.
Fear-struck, the man was almost hidden in his half torn, yellow-striped hazmat suit checkered with red symbols and logos. On his filthy face was a pair of busted goggles with ruffled and squalid, dark grey hair waving in from above in loose strings.
In the background, there were alarms blaring nonstop, but he seemed to be in a closed-off room. Inside was pitch black, leaving the only light source to be the six inch square window at the top of the door behind him. In which, it just revealed a screaming woman running by. The only other luminescence was the small flashlight on the camera itself just above the lens.
Almost like he was running out of time, he ripped off his goggles. I instantly recognized the face decked in a perturbed expression.
He was my father.
Licking his lips with an intensity I've never seen before, he ran a trembling hand through his sordid hair and continued. "Something went...something went terribly wrong with the fusion stabilizers for the new project we were working on and the entire nuclear plant is undergoing a chronic melt down" he choked, trying desperately to quickly regain breath.
I don't know why but the way he looked at the camera made me feel like he was talking directly through the lens. A specific message meant for someone who could do something about it.
To...me.
The video crackled with static and white and black lines shot back and forth though the middle of the screen. It left small windows of vision for me to expliot in order to get what could be the final sight of my father.
"No. Nothing was wrong. Someone sabotaged the stabilizers so that they wouldn't be able to control the temperature and radioactive output of our...experiment."
Something about the way he said 'experiment' told me it was most likely classified for the government or a top secret organization on some remote island on bunker.
"And the worst part is, they somehow managed to rewire the g-level 20 DAS chord while I was constructing the stabilizers themselves so it looks like they were built to fail from the very beginning." He took a heavy breath and held it.
"They framed me and now the government is coming after me, hard," he cried. "Whats left of it anyway."
His hands and body fumbled in different directions showing that he is nearly losing control of himself over the pressing predicament. He even gave off a hysterical laugh. This must be just now sinking in for him too. "No matter what they say...I am innocent!" he proclaimed with a piteous ring in his hoarse tone.
"I wanted this project to work more than anyone and some Neanderthal clearly didn't have the same vision! Then has the...the nerve to pin the death of over three quarters of the planet on the lead scientist trying to bring that same world into the future!" he fumed, almost flailing his arms in unfathomable frustration.
He took several moments he seemed to not have to whip his head back and forth in a paranoid fashion as if someone was watching him through a hidden camera.
"To whoever gets this message, I am innocent and I hope to God that you can believe me or else I'm a dead man."
He began to say something else but then an explosion rocked the building. A large show of ghastly flames made an appearance though the compact window on the door behind him as he jolted around to see.
The same shock wave knocked the camera out of what was presumably his hand and onto the floor. As a result, it sent more static shocks throughout the video to the breaking point. I could just barely get a glimpse of what he was doing in between screen white outs. The audio distortion began to infiltrate the thin barrier known as my sanity.
You could even hear the intensity of the vibration from the blast through the camera since it was now laying sideways on the floor, bouncing at every rumble. He took a glace through the small window and looked petrified in fear over the chaos that's taken up a threshold a few feet away outside the ironclad door.
In one last mad effort, he turned around and dived for the fallen camera. His face now taking up the majority of the screen, the camera's small light obscured his features. "Please believe me when I say--"
The video finally cut off for good with a frozen image of my father's horrid face still pleading for his innocence and his mouth hung ajar in mid-speech. I didn't notice before, but now it was perceptible that there were scads of objects falling on top of him and tablet file-shelves collapsing over each other.
The onslaught of cold sweat that drenched his creamy tanned skin in tital waves sent shivers through my every nerve. I could see the bloodcurdling trepidation of what's to come in his frosty white-bluish eyes. He always had such an immensely expressive look in his eyes like you could foresee exactly how he felt just by taking a single innocent glance at them.
I always loved losing myself into those wide crystal-like blue orbs. They were always an odd contrast against his light-toned black hair that I always called 'dirty black'. But now the last time I'll see those eyes is when unmistakable hysteria embodied them completely. But what the hell happened there?
I felt a ravishing need to know and there was only one lone soul that could elucidate exactly what's occurring in this exigent matter.
And I need to find him before it was too late.
****
SIX MONTHS EARLIER
"3, 2, 1!" Everyone in Times Square in New York called out with vigorous excitement, white-washing their tone in pure joyful cheers. The huge screen on the center building showed the New Year's ball as it touched down the bottom of the bedazzled pole. Lights flooded Times Square with golden arrays from towering skyscrapers gutting the charcoal sky concealed by the think mask of city beams. The bustling hum of conversation finally returned from a powerful uproar that seared into the natural flow of our eardrums like a wall of speakers were on full blast.
The smell of sweat effortlessly subjugated the pang of bitter cold causing the mass of bodies to snuggle and expand the ever reaching grasp of the public embrace. More times than I can count, I've been bumped around enough to make a pinball machine run for it's ever so fleeting money.
Then the screen showed the number 2098 to remind us of the new year that promised more than we could ever imagine. No one knew how right that statement would be. I was with my best friends, Madison and Avery, and they could not stop talking about their plans for this year, what they did last year, and etc. Avery noticed my absent stare.
"Come on, Skylar, this is a night of rebirth, and accomplishing old dreams in order to create new ones!" she vowed as she danced the night away. She was always the glass half full, innocent, daisy-in-a-battlefield type person. She always found the best in people and was an open book when it comes to trust and making friends.
Besides, with her body, intelligence, golden brown hair that was long and wavy to go with her sparkling hazel brown eyes, making friends was not, in any stretch of the word, difficult. Always straight A's, every time, no exceptions, except once when her first love shot her down with his anti-love missiles dead-locked on her secretly blown kisses. She fell into a social coma and she didn't do any school assignments for like a full week.
Even though she left them at home, her sexy slim cherry red eyeglasses always completed that picture of that nerdy hot girl on some tech magazine sexually teasing a MacBook pro.
Maddison broke in with her feel-good smile and wrapped her arms around the both of us. She gave me urging gaze. "Skylar, why aren't you throwing up your arms in wild celebration?"
Before I could respond, her arms grabbed my arms and we started dancing. I found myself blowing my thick hair from my rosy face. It's dark grey curls whipping behind my ear and my frost marble eyes rolling in the apprehension of Maddison enforcing enjoyment upon me. I could tell she was really having fun, or drunk, so I slowly joined and then after a while, I sort of got into the groove. "There you go! See now was that so hard?"
Maddison was the smirky, I-get-what-I-want kind of gal. She wasn't manipulative, but that wouldn't be a far stretch if need be.
Of the three of us, she was the party animal and she loved living the high life no matter how it crashed and burned. I mean, she had two dates to prom. With her glossy black hair curled to perfection and dark ebony eyes, getting what she wants should barely require any manipulation on her part anyway.
However, despite her 'demanding' personality, she will give you the best advice because she sees the world in such a linear perspective. She doesn't sugarcoat her feelings to others and tries to look at everything from every possible angle before making any sort of judgment. I always said she would make it far doing law practice.
This is because of her parents' divorce long before we met and she had no help going through it, so ever since, she been this dark soul wandering through life like a new kid in a school the size of Texas.
But anger issues proved to be a critical problem as well, especially when it was liquor-endued. Having Avery and I as friends negated her drinking habits to a minimum but when she gets moody, one bottle sometimes turns to more. But I have to admit, she was definitely the funniest person I've ever met by far. She is a great story-teller and a saint in the gossip department.
Our conversation continued until the light show came on. Multiple rays of different colored lights raced across the New York sky in an expensive, but mesmerizing display. Then something new happened.
A holographic blue dome formed its way above all of Times Square.
On the ceiling, was a showing of all the past new year ball drops, emphasizing the evolution of technology over time with an over speaker narrating as it goes on.
"With this new-age technology at the tips of our fingers, look at the things we can accomplish!" narration guy boasted.
The same holographic dome became images and shapes above us changing between complex architectural structures to breath-taking, colorful three-dimensional images of deep outer space that displayed beautifully against the midnight sky. They even shut off the lights in all the surrounding buildings around the holograms so the area was completely dark except for the show above us.
After the presentation of how the dinosaurs were wiped out by a flaming meteor, the city lights came back on from the bottom to the top in complete sync. A huge round of applause erupted and my friends and I joined with our imaginations screaming mayday from it being blasted into smithereens. Yeah, it was 2098, but these types of holograms were still science fiction to us and we never thought that it would be upon us as quickly as it was.
The ride home was great and we talked, laughed, and tried to sing to the radio as we neared our small house in the middle of Riverwalk, New York. It was about half an hour from New York City and had a lot of country-side, but it wasn't completely off-grid. We all were roommates in a three bedroom house, but Avery persisted that the house was hers because she bought it with her own money. No one complained but she felt the need to remind us every so often.
Avery had a drink then dozed off in her room and I relaxed in the living room that looked like it should have been a garage but was made a large room instead and a massive window where the garage door should have been. It was fine because we could use all the room possible between three people.
I was twenty-three, Avery was a year younger while Maddison just reached twenty-seven a month ago. Even though Maddy was the only one without a job, she was still able to pay some of her shares. We cut her slack but she knew this wasn't something to play around with.
I'm a part-time manager at a gun range and Avery works for a small filming business downtown.
"So what happened to you out there before the light show?" Maddison inquired with a dash of curiosity. "You seemed...off."
"Maddy, to be honest, I don't know, I just..." I trailed off, stoking a lighter shade of grey in my hair.
"Skylar, my dear, when you say 'to be honest', you actually have to be honest."
She could always see right through me and my hopeless lies. I shifted uncomfortably in order for her to back off, but her probing stare made me give in. "It's my dad."
"Figured."
"Well, I um, he just disappeared on me again," I admitted. "He gets so caught up in his work, it's like I don't exist anymore."
"Well you are both adults with your separate lives," she pointed out. "You have your job; he has his."
"There's that but even if we were both elderly and living on opposite sides of the planet we should still somewhat be in each other's lives," I affirmed. A hopeful spark dazzled in my eyes as I pleaded for her understanding.
"It's not like we hate each other or had some sort of falling out, he simply just left right out of our lives while living in the same house as us."
"You and your brother." she implied.
"Exactly."
"That was before you moved out, so what happened recently?" she asked, changing her expression to acknowledge the fact that this was now something serious.
"I asked him to take me to the ball drop," I told her, on edge to ready myself for her reaction.
"So we were your second choice?" She lifted an eyebrow but not much more. I gave a weak nod. She held her gaze but then busted out laughing.
"It's okay! You wanted to spend time with your father on New Year's Day; there is nothing wrong with that."
She scooted over on the couch and hugged me. "I'm glad Avery and I was your second choice. It means that right below your own father, you wanted to go with us. Quite the honor if anything."
I hugged her back. "I have the best friends."
"Damn right."
****
~ Greyson ~
"Dr. Greyson! Dr. Greyson!" a woman called as she rushed up to my father in his white coat fitted neatly against his decent, dietary and morning-exercised body. Keeping in shape was has always been a thing with him. Something about stress and work pressure.
She came as quickly as her pink, low-heeled latched boots would allow her and he was comfortably at his desk tapping away on the desk screen.
He was signing other digital files with one-handed fingerprints with a cup of coffee locked in the other.
She approached him, switching from rushed to formal and tried to slow her excitement as he looked up at her.
"Yes Dr..." he inquired without really asking.
"Henson, Dr. Joana Henson." She stuck her hand out in greeting and through brief consideration, he shook her hand.
She had beauty going for her with the petite blond hair that was waving its way into bio-lab coat. Curled, Goldilocks bangs brushed to the side of her face, just barely covered her right eye.
Hair styled the side and pink lip balm sparkling on her thin lips, she knew surly how to make a first impression.
There was light make up on her face including a soft grey eye-shadow and defined eyelashes. Her fingernails were also lathered in a coat of cherry blossom.
"Yes, now, um, what was..."
"Come to the lab immediately," she urged. "There is something you definitely need to see."
She led him into the elevator and took them down two floors down and the doors parted. A super high-tech laboratory with white and black arms operating other machines.
There was a long table in the center of the long room with three people working on both sides of it.
Dr. Greyson then remembered why he put a team of four together in the first place.
****
"Yes sir, did you need me for something?" Dr. Greyson asked Mr. Stein who was in charge of the entire complex. He clicked the door shut behind him and ambled up to the mahogany desk Mr. Stein was stationed behind.
The wall was decorated with plaques and awards and accomplishments of all sorts. There were two blue leather seats, but before he could sit down, Mr. Stein began.
"I do," he replied plainly. Dr. Greyson gave him a slightly confused look before Mr. Stein continued. "Can you tell me what we do here?"
Trying to decipher what exactly was going on here, he played along. "Well at this facility we try to convert nuclear energy into tangible electricity and make breakthroughs in medicine and much more."
"And what have we done recently to do that?" he asked with a straight face. "What breakthroughs have we made?"
Still trying to figure out the rules to this game, he replied, "Well we finally finalized solid, holographic technology."
"Yes but that wasn't us. That was the people who lead in technology", he remarked. "What have WE done?"
"Well were working on--"
He cut him off. "I don't care what we are WORKING ON. What have we DONE?!"
There was a brief pause of I-may-lose-my-job silence.
"Nothing, sir."
"That needs to change...or else we're going to need a new lead scientist." he threatened. "I need a breakthrough that I can show the board by next year."
"Yes, sir."
"Now get out."
****
"Tell me you have something," Dr. Greyson demanded. "Your reputation and my job depend on it." There was a rebellious annoyance in his tone almost to mock Mr. Stein.
There was always an unspoken rivalry between the two of them that was expressed mainly in stares, glares, and correcting each other unnecessarily.
Everyone knew it, but this is the first time someone's job was threatened.
Though Dr. Greyson didn't take the man seriously, he was going to bust his ass trying to make that deadline with something new.
He and Dr. Hansen were met by a young man about the age of Dr. Hansen which would be around their late twenties.
Everyone was around that age besides Dr. Greyson himself and his trusted partner who was standing near the corner, Dr. Lance, who was sixty-eight but looks younger than forty. His mind and body were always a peak profession and always seemed alert.
He's been over our house multiple times and he and I know each other pretty well. My dad was fifty-one as of last month.
The young man introduced himself. "I'm Doctor Nickolas Vault"
They quickly shook hands and Greyson walked past him. "Nice name, did you come up with it all by yourself?"
He wasn't looking for an answer, but as they all swarmed the desk to observe what has been done since Dr. Greyson's absence.
He had a very well styled opal hairdo with the sides mostly shaved off and the top about an inch high and gelled forward with fake red highlights atop the silvery outlines.
It contrasted oddly against his whitish almost flushed out green eyes. "I come from a long line of Vaults and I'm sure every one of them gets comments like that whenever they try to--"
"So why was I called down here?" he cut Dr. Vault off. "Better be important."
"Most definitely," Dr. Vault almost shouted. Seems he shares Dr. Hansen enthusiasm as he had Greyson look into a microscope. "Do you see what happens when the Helium ion bonds fuse together with the chemical components of this ore?"
"Yes, it's collapsing in on itself it's...looping" Dr. Greyson smiled. "When will it burn out?"
"That the thing," Dr. Hansen interjected. "It doesn't burn out." She walked over to a side table and picked out some more samples and showed it to him.
Under a microscope he saw that they were all starting to react continuously, looping, but never finishing because of some regenerative property in the ore they couldn't pin-point.
He looked down and saw the dates that each one was first tested and saw that this looping has been happening since about a couple months ago and still going strong.
Each sample looks exactly alike with no sign of disintegration or corrosion. The energy signatures seemed to never falter or reduce.
"Are you telling me that these micro nuclear reactions are..."
"Infinite? Yes," claimed Dr. Lance, looking up from a microscope. "I believe we just found a possible endless source of energy better than any river dam," he announced and my dad smiled a wide grin as he crossed his arms and contemplated this outcome once more.
"I believe we just found that breakthrough."
***
A/N: OK! Hello, everyone, this is my BRAND NEW series that will be a trilogy. I've been toying with apocalypse ideas for the LONGEST time and this was the one I thought I could really put a magic spin into and hope to create something spectacular.
~~The picture up top is Skylar btw.~~
But don't take my word for it! Tell me what you think, what you would like to see happen, or something different altogether!
Tap that like button and leave a comment! :)