Devlin paused to allow this to sink in.
“You’re saying,” Daniel said slowly, “that you and your people—the Secretum—are the descendants of Cain?”
Devlin nodded, then continued his story. “Genesis chapter four, verse seven, tells of a profoundly significant moment in the life of our father Cain. Just after his brother has been honored and he has been shamed, God tells Cain that sin waits like a hungry lion to devour him, but he must overcome it. Master it.
He
. . . must
master
. . .
sin
.” Devlin repeated with great emphasis.
“After Cain murdered his brother and was sent away as an outcast, he reflected on these words, and came to regard them as a personal charge, a singular purpose that could only have been assigned to him. At last understanding the magnitude of what he’d done in taking his brother’s life, Cain couldn’t reconcile himself with the fact that God has spared
his
. Not only was his life spared, but God promised vengeance ‘seven times over’ upon anyone who killed Cain. Why such drastic measures to ensure Cain’s survival? Cain made the connection between these two divine statements quickly: He’d been spared for a very special task. He alone would find a way to master sin. It was his destiny.
“The Bible records that in those times, people lived a great deal longer than we live now, aging up to one thousand years old, even older. Yet the Good Book does not reveal how long Cain lived before his death.
We,
his children, know that he lived a very long time, long enough to still be alive when many of the very same descendants I listed a moment ago were born, and grew to be men, and had children and descendants of their own. Together with this group of his five most direct firstborn sons, Cain forged his own society. A secret culture that would live hidden beneath the world in the place that had been prepared, to preserve them against the coming Flood, so that they could carry out the great task the Maker had set before Cain: to master sin.”
“You really believe all this?” Daniel said, leaning forward in his chair. “That Cain’s descendants have been alive all this time, hidden away where no one knew about you . . . so that you could attempt a preordained task to ‘master sin’?”
Devlin eyed him knowingly. “Who better than the first murderer to find a way to undo the wickedness inherent in man’s heart?”
“So how does that get you here, to all of this pain and devastation?” Daniel’s expression turned dark again, and he settled back into his chair.
“There were six of them, including Cain himself,” Devlin continued, “and the Secretum of Six is named in their honor. We are more than an organization, more than a religion, more than a nation. We are a complete, self-sufficient society that has grown and flourished and evolved independent of the rest of the world.
“The Flood ravaged the earth and exterminated the human race, but the Flood did not reach the Secretum’s home, so perfectly sealed off it was, and so we continued to multiply and survive in our underground home. But over time, Cain’s people became aware of the Flood, and we believed it to be confirmation of what we were called to do.
“You see, from its inception, the human experiment was flawed. The Creator imbued His creations with free will. He set out to see if a self-aware, sentient species that had the ability to choose its own path would willingly choose the path of light. The Secretum watched from a distance as the depravity in Noah’s time led the Maker to resolve that He would wipe away humanity with a great disaster. It was the answer to the experiment—cold, hard evidence that man is incapable of choosing the path of light for himself.
“But God loved Noah, so much so that, after the Flood, he promised Noah that He would never again wipe out earth’s populace with a disaster. God, being perfect and existing outside of time, knew from the very beginning of His creation that He would make this promise to Noah, just as He knew that binding himself by this promise would make himself incapable of violating it.
“Which is why He provided the children of Cain with a prophecy, to guide our actions. You know the prophecy; seven thousand years ago it was inscribed on the object known as the Dominion Stone, which is a piece of the Hollow itself.”
“But where did this prophecy come from?” Daniel asked.
“Cain’s wife. She was a seer possessing insights into the nature of the universe that made sane men tremble. Her most important prediction was recorded on the Dominion Stone and preserved there for millennia, and the Secretum began the difficult task of gathering the resources necessary to ensure that everything in the prophecy came true.”
“That’s why you’ve been interfering in human history for thousands of years,” Alex observed.
“Of course,” Devlin replied. “The prophecy states that the Secretum will guide the coming of the Bringer, and the Bringer will set free the Angel of Death, giving him free reign and dominion over the earth. This is precisely what we have done.”
“But
why
?” Alex pressed. “If humanity’s free will is the problem, how does bringing forth Oblivion fix it?”
“Oblivion will annihilate mankind. Without man, there will be no free will, and all of the pain and trouble it has wrought will finally, beautifully, be wiped away.”
“So let me see if I understand this,” Daniel began thoughtfully. “You took a being whose sole purpose is to end life . . . You took this creature and you shoehorned it into a Grant Borrows–shaped wrapper, giving it the powers of the Bringer. You essentially provided it with a lifetime supply of steroids and energy drinks. Oblivion is an all-powerful killing machine with the ability and the will to destroy the entire planet . . . and you made it infinitely easier for him to do that.” He paused. “Are you people out of your minds?”
“By your standards, perhaps we are.”
“By our standards,” Payton spat, “you’re not even
people
.”
“You’re an intelligent, civilized human being,” Ethan said, bitterness etched into his voice. “How can you allow this? We’re talking about
billions
of innocent lives!”
Devlin snorted.
“What’s funny?” Alex asked.
“ ‘Innocent.’ How casually your people use that word to describe yourselves. One could
choke
on the irony.”
“You should be so lucky, you miserable git,” Payton threatened, a hand on his sword’s hilt.
“Death is a necessary part of our task,” Devlin explained with horrifying calm. “It’s unfortunate, we do not relish it, but it is required. The Creator’s promise to Noah prevents Him from wiping out all life on earth again, or surely He would have already done so—look at how far mankind has come since Noah’s day! Human sacrifices and slavery. Mass ritual suicides. Torture and violence celebrated in art! Child predators! Sexual degradation at your fingertips! We’ve fallen further into depravity than even those in Noah’s time. Can you imagine how much lower mankind will go, given time?”
“You actually believe you’re the good guy here, don’t you?” Ethan asked, incredulous.
“The Secretum of Six worships Jehovah, the God of Cain. Our purpose is to carry out His greatest work—the work that He cannot and will not carry out himself.”
“The Angel of Death,” Payton replied, scoffing at the words. “Oblivion is the
Angel of Death
?”
“He has many names,” Devlin replied calmly. “The Destroyer. The Destroying Angel. The Angel of the Lord. The Angel of Death. Now, for the first time ever, he lives within human flesh, and in that form he is known as Oblivion. But he has existed since the beginning of time. He entered the houses of the Egyptians and smote their firstborn sons. He struck down some two hundred thousand Assyrian soldiers when that conquering nation threatened Jerusalem during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. He delivered the plague that David chose as punishment for his sin of pride—a plague that killed seventy thousand in just three days. And he is the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, who will ride a pale horse at the end of time.”
“But time
has
ended, hasn’t it?” Nora spoke up and asked. “Is this the Apocalypse—what’s happening now?”
“I rather think that time has merely . . . taken a breather. Once Oblivion has finished his work, the Creator will create life on this planet anew, and time will resume.”
“What do you mean, ‘create life anew’?” Alex asked.
“Do you still not understand?” Devlin observed, mildly surprised. “Like the Bringer before him, Oblivion wears the Seal of Dominion. And the Seal unlocks the Gates.”
“What gates?”
“The center of the earth. Another dimension. A dark spiritual realm. Whatever framework you think of it in, it’s a real place that exists. And it’s not the ‘fire and brimstone’ prison you were taught about in Sunday school. The simplest definition for it is that it is the place where evil
lives
. Thrives.
Grows. And from which it spreads.
“Evil infests that place, and like all that is vile, it lusts after
more
of everything. It is confined there, but it eternally rages against its bonds like a caged animal. And it grows ever more restless. The Gates are all that keep that terrible place from pressing in on our reality. The Seal is the only known object in existence that can peel back the boundaries between dimensions and let Gehenna loose to consume our world. Which is precisely what Oblivion has done. Look around you. Does this place now not contain the physical properties of all that is bad, all that is wrong and cruel and impure?”
“So earth is being . . .
annexed
by Hell. Wonderful. But why would Oblivion unleash this if he’s just going to kill us anyway?” Alex asked.
“He cannot do otherwise,” Devlin replied. “Revelation 6:8—‘I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.’ Where Oblivion goes, Hell must follow.”
“That’s why the sky is burning and the land has turned to volcanic rock and why there are wildfires spread out all over the place,” Daniel said, more to the others than to Devlin.
“Where you see Hellfire,” Devlin corrected, “I see the very fires of creation.”
“So why did time stop?” Alex asked.
“Time did not ‘stop’; it has simply been . . . removed. Time is a scientific law imposed upon mortal reality. Its forward motion defines our existence. But we are no longer existing in a realm defined by the strictures of mortal science. When Oblivion was birthed into human flesh, the Gates were opened and that terrible place began to spread into our reality. This place is earth no more. It is the DarkWorld, possessing the same properties as that place of suffering and torment—a place that exists wholly outside of time and space.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” Alex said. “What did you mean when you said Oblivion was making it so that the Creator can ‘create life anew’?”
“Oblivion has come to earth,” Devlin replied. “He is the Unmaker. Everything that is living, he will turn to death. And he will not stop here. Once he is finished with our world, he will spread his reach into the very cosmos and render all of the stars and other planets as nothing but ash. If any other life exists in the universe, he will destroy it as well.
“He will lay waste to existence itself, and once he has consumed the mortal plane and everything within it, once the earth has faded into primordial ash, it will be a void, formless once more. Just as it was in the beginning. And the Creator will have a blank canvas upon which to start again.
“He was bound by his own promise to never again exterminate the human race, so we have done it for Him. Now, He will be free to create a new race who will
always
do that which is right, and in whom He can delight without regret.”
“You mean a race without free will,” Daniel said.
“Precisely,” Devlin replied.
“So that’s it, then,” Daniel said with finality. “That’s what all of this has been about? The Bringer, the Dominion Stone, the Rings, the prophecy, every single way you’ve manipulated all of our lives . . . It was about you pressing some kind of cosmic reset button.”
Devlin merely looked at him, but there was a hint of triumph upon his face.
Daniel was unmoved. “Alex isn’t the only one who heard Bible stories as a kid. My mom even sent me to Sunday school once upon a time. And in all this time, for all your centuries of preparation, I can’t believe you missed the point,” Daniel said, shaking his head bitterly. “
I
understand it better than you do, and I don’t even buy in to it. It couldn’t be more obvious: The Creator
wanted
us to have the choice between right or wrong. Because in our choosing, we prove not only His goodness, but His very existence. He has no interest in mindless robots—He wants those who
choose
to do what’s right.”
“But we cannot!” Devlin cried. “If allowed to proceed unchecked, humanity will only dream up newer and more deplorable subversions of what the Creator intended!”
Daniel looked upon the older man with loathing. He stood and casually removed a pistol from the back of his pants—a gun no one knew he had—and pressed the muzzle against Devlin’s right temple. Everyone reacted in shock—some almost cried out—but no one made a move.
“I should kill you where you sit,” Daniel said coolly, “but would that really end this debate? Would that action be right or good? It would
feel
good, after what you—” His voice broke, and he couldn’t finish the thought. Tears burned behind his eyes.
“Daniel, I’m not sure you’re thinking clearly,” Alex said softly, alarmed and trying to feed calm into him. But his emotions were much too strong for her to overcome now.
“How do you know that, Alex? How do any of you know what the real me is like? Maybe the real me isn’t a scientist at all, but a cold-blooded killer. I wasn’t lying when I told Yen Wei I was a murderer. Did you know it was me who killed Matthew Drexel? I shot him in the forehead with a gun just like this one.”
“Don’t expect any tears over that death,” Payton scoffed. “Drexel was a predator who deserved a far worse fate than a quick demise.”