Ethan’s journey here had followed the shoreline with endless views of the devastation to his right, and it left him numb. The impact this event would have upon the planet’s ecology couldn’t be overstated. After emerging from the underground Entry Node, he’d taken his stolen Jeep into Antalya to stock up on supplies. At a roadside food mart, he overheard two men speaking in heavily accented English about a massive cruise ship that had gotten stuck ten miles off the coast of Spain when the ocean began to evaporate there. It would take weeks if not months for the world’s oceans to dissipate completely, but ships so close to shorelines were unable to outrun it. Hundreds of passengers had to be evacuated by helicopter.
Ethan turned to his left, watching through his binoculars. It was from this point that he knew Oblivion and the others would approach, though there was no sign of them yet. It wouldn’t be long, though. Oblivion was still steadily walking, never pausing or slowing down.
To his far right, a deployment of military power the likes of which he’d never seen was taking up positions, forming a line that they would die to prevent Oblivion from crossing.
Die
being the key word,
Ethan thought.
The fact that the coalition had been able to put so many troops in place so quickly was nothing less than astounding. Unprecedented, even. He saw hundreds of tanks and light infantry vehicles, thousands of makeshift sandbag walls that had already been erected and reinforced, and hundreds of thousands of men and women, all of whom were no bigger from this vantage point than moving dark green specks of dust.
Thousands of lights had been raised alongside portable generators. Hundreds of helicopters buzzed the battlefield at shallow heights. Thousands of tanks sat ready and waiting near the front of the line. Squadron after squadron of fighter planes and bombers flew by overhead every few minutes. Ethan knew that more than one of those aircraft would be carrying nuclear ordnance.
Still, the battlefield itself was largely empty. A wall of humans and machines and equipment on the right, and an unseen single-file procession of thirty or forty superhumans (or however many had been summoned to Oblivion’s ranks so far) on the left.
On a collision course.
Ethan scanned the military encampments for something resembling a command center. Stevens had specifically told him that she was coming here, and she would be wherever the generals and senior military advisors would be planning and coordinating their attack. It was odd, to be sure—a director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation venturing to a foreign battlefield—but then, these were odd times. He suspected that her sudden insider knowledge about the mysterious individual behind this threat had something to do with it.
Somebody in a top position wanted her here as an advisor, because of what she knew. Ethan was willing to bet on it.
Which was all the better. Because what Ethan needed right now more than anything in the world was someone who could get him in, past the legions of soldiers and vehicles and weapons.
Oblivion hated life in all its forms. It was his nature.
And yet he was grateful to the humans. Peculiar, that. It was humans who finally allowed him to begin completing the function for which he was meant.
Eons he had waited. He registered few emotions, and impatience was not one of them, so the waiting had not bothered him. His irritation came from another source. For only a handful of times in all of human history had he been allowed to act freely, and even then his freedom came with heavy restrictions.
Now, at last, Oblivion could compose his masterpiece of death without impediments of any kind. Given autonomy to choose how he would operate, to dictate the strictures of his efforts, he would un-create everything that lived, in ways that no other being in the universe was capable of.
How ironic it was that here, in this human form, he would decimate the human race. The darkness he was spreading upon the earth, the absence of time, the fires, the blistered sky, the acrid smell, the raining blood, the heat . . . All of this was merely the canvas upon which his work would be done. Byproducts more than anything else.
The red mark on the back of his hand caught his attention momentarily, and he briefly wondered if its curved arc had grown longer. He dismissed the thought.
The tools of his beautiful death, his
army
, marched silently behind him. Those who had granted him his freedom, the Secretum of Six, rode nearby in machines built by human hands. The vehicles were slanted upward now as Oblivion and his army climbed a moderate ridge, a mountain beyond which they could not see.
The first of these vehicles drew near to him, and the one called Devlin began shouting words in his direction. Other passengers in the vehicle were eating field rations as they rode; most seemed bored.
Devlin was holding in one hand a small communications device that he and several of his fellows seemed to favor. Often throughout the journey, Oblivion had seen one or more of them speaking into these diminutive folding machines.
“Great one, a vast army has assembled ahead to oppose you,” Devlin called out as Oblivion continued his relentless pace, one foot in front of the other. “Their number exceeds what we are able to count.”
Humans opposing him. How expected. How inevitable.
How very pointless.
But then . . . So many humans had gathered all in one place, directly ahead. Terribly convenient of them. He would feast on their souls.
“They are immaterial,” Oblivion replied, his voice cutting through the fabric of reality and echoing across dimensional walls. As ever, his voice was monotone, yet simmering with malice, as if barely able to contain the tremendous power housed within this human body.
Devlin faltered for a moment, then collected himself. “I do not doubt you in any way, great one,” he shouted over the noise of his vehicle. “But I believe you should face them with the knowledge that their technologies and their weapons of war have advanced and multiplied significantly since you last faced human opposition. While I know they could never harm you, they have devised weapons strong enough to wipe out your entire army with a single blow.”
Oblivion continued walking until he reached the top of the rise. On the other side came into view distant artificial lights, dark machine forms, and hundreds of thousands of human beings.
Unimpressive.
“They will die at my hands, all of them,” Oblivion said. “The only difference between them and the rest of your kind is that they have chosen the location where their human existence will end.”
He never slowed in his walk. He began sending silent orders to a select few members of his army. Their unique talents would be put to fine use.
“He’s out there and he’s coming. I need more, Director Stevens,” said General Bradford Davies. He stood at the center of the high-tech coalition command center, surrounded by peers from other coalition nation armies. Stevens stood nearby, over the shoulder of a young man working on a computer station that simulated the battlefield and the coalition’s deployments. “We all do.”
“I’m working on it, General,” Stevens replied nervously, standing up fully. “My contact is endeavoring to uncover additional information as we speak.”
“We can’t wait!” Davies nearly shouted. “Our projections show that this ‘Oblivion’ will be within range of our most powerful weapons in mere moments. I need to know how to take him down.”
“I’m afraid you can’t,” announced a new voice at the outer edge of the room.
Four rifles from guards were trained on Ethan, and he froze where he stood, arms raised.
“Who is this?” Davies barked.
“He’s with me,” Stevens announced, and waved him through the guards. “General Davies, meet my inside source,
former
special agent Ethan Cooke.”
Ethan was half-led and half-pushed by two men, with their hands on either of his shoulders, to the center of the room where the military leaders stood.
General Davies wasted no time in sizing him up. “What were you just saying about this Oblivion character, son?”
“Your opponent in this ill-conceived battle,” Ethan defiantly declared, “is
the undefeatable enemy
. I’m forced to wonder if Director Stevens passed on
all
of my intel, because if she had, you might not be here at all, planning a war against an opponent you cannot overcome.”
“And how,” Stevens retorted, “do you
know
he can’t be defeated?”
Ethan’s eyes flared as he spun on one heel to face Stevens. He knew she hated him, but how many times had he told her this already? And now she was selling him out?
“It’s a long story you don’t have time for,” Ethan replied, looking once more at the general. “The long and short of it is, I was told so by a group of people who know a lot more about what’s happening here than any of us. And I believe them.”
“Young man,” Davies began, stepping forward imposingly, “this battle is about to start, regardless of your opinion of our military capabilities. You clearly have some kind of firsthand knowledge of this Oblivion, and you’ve no doubt traveled a long way to help us. So if you know anything that can save innocent lives—any hint of a weakness we could exploit—then I’m grateful to hear it. But if you withhold said information or if you’re simply wasting time that we don’t have . . . I’ve half a mind to personally stick you in front of a firing squad.”
“Oblivion has no weakness to exploit, General,” Ethan replied with urgency. “I can’t say it any plainer than that. I am
trying
to save innocent lives, and that
is
the reason I came. And the only way to do that is to pack up your men and go home, as quickly as humanly possible. You’re trying to stop a force of nature here, and I’m telling you—it
can’t
be done!”
The military guards standing nearby tensed at Ethan’s outburst.
Davies examined him carefully, while Stevens’s head darted back and forth between them nervously.
“I believe that you believe what you’re saying, former special agent Cooke,” Davies said with calculated measure. “But you know a great deal more about this enemy than you’re sharing, and that I will not tolerate in a time of war.” Davies motioned to the guards. “Lock him up, but I want you to put him someplace where he has an unobstructed view of the battle.”
Ethan’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and the guards began leading him away. He looked imploringly at Stevens, but her gaze slid smoothly away from him.
“Every man or woman who dies in this battle . . .” Davies called out as Ethan was being led away. “You just sit there and watch it happen! I hope their faces fuel your nightmares from this moment on. They’re on your head.”
Ethan struggled against the cuffs in frustration and futility. “No, sir,” he shouted. “They’re on yours.”
In the absence of an on-site prison, Ethan was taken to a small A-shaped tent two miles from the command center, a tent held up by two metal poles jammed into the ground. At the front pole, one of Ethan’s handcuffs was released, wrapped around the pole, then locked again.
The view inside the tent was uninteresting; it seemed to be nothing more than a storage space for medical supplies, probably attached to the ground infantry unit that was deploying in the immediate vicinity around him. It looked like one of the smaller divisions working within the coalition; the four dozen or so men he could see were setting up stationary ground turrets, sandbag trenches, and one very large missile launcher.
The coalition forces would not advance on Oblivion. They had drawn a line that they intended to hold against him. Oblivion would come to them. And as near as Ethan could tell, he was positioned near the heart of the battlefield.
To Ethan’s immediate right was a narrow river running through the desert, about ten feet across. It had once been a river, anyway. Along with the other geological transformations caused by Oblivion, the river’s water had dried up and been replaced by something hot, thick, and glowing red.
Lava.
Ethan was staring at a river of lava flowing through a Middle Eastern desert. The glow given off by the river gave his entire field of vision an orange hue, which contrasted with the dark background of the black earth and the dark, fiery sky. It created a striking, stark effect upon the landscape.
The wildfires scattered here and there, the ground made of volcanic rock, the boiling skies above, the river of lava, the intense heat, the smell of sulfur . . . Suddenly it all fit.
He was trapped in the center of Hell. And there was nothing he could do but watch.
A black man with an average build, a crisp-brimmed hat, and a voice that projected for miles bellowed orders to the infantry division into which Ethan had been plunked. The sergeant pointed and shouted without end, a line of sweat circling the area where his hat touched his head.
With nothing else to do, Ethan sized up this field officer. He wore no wedding ring, but he was older than Ethan by at least five years, Ethan estimated. He wore a stern and dour expression, but creases around the corners of his mouth betrayed lips that knew how to smile. His eyelids drooped almost halfway down over his eyes, but not in a listless way. He rather struck Ethan as world-weary, as if he’d seen it all and done it all before. Ethan couldn’t help wondering how many conflicts this man had fought in.
Ethan also wondered if this commanding officer or his troops had any idea that they were about to die a very swift and efficient death.
As his men hustled to and fro with equipment and armaments, the shouting man paused long enough to approach Ethan’s tent and introduce himself as Sergeant Paul Tucker.
“Ethan Cooke,” Ethan replied automatically.
“I don’t care who you are or why the brass sent you here for us to baby-sit in the middle of a war,” Tucker bulldozed on as if Ethan had said nothing, “but you are going to do exactly one thing, and that is stay still and be quiet.”
Ethan considered pointing out that that was, technically,
two
things. But this wasn’t the time to argue.