Ray walked down the mountain path with Ben and Sal trailing behind—both men aiming their guns below. As they came to the end of the path, the three could see John and Todd ahead, laid out facedown on the ground with their hands behind them. Ben and Sal followed Ray as he closed in on the two men. Ray held up a hand for Ben and Sal to stay back and scanned the perimeter with his Smartround gun, making sure John was telling the truth about Carrie, Janice, and Kevin. He then aimed his gun back at John and Todd.
"Stand up with your hands on your heads," Ray ordered. The two stood up with their hands clasped on their heads.
"Ben, take their guns." Ben disarmed the two quickly and jogged away with the weapons. Ray stepped closer to John. "Come with me, John."
Ray and John walked away, and as they did, Todd aimlessly began to jog off into the barren land around him. Ben and Sal swung their Smartround guns in Todd's direction. Turning, Todd saw the two and lifted his hands in the air while shouting out to John Adams.
"I can't do this, Colonel. I'm sorry. I can't help you. If my daughter lives and I'm damned forever for not doing anything to help save Him, I can live with that…as long as my daughter is safe."
John and Ray stopped walking, looking back at Todd.
"I understand. And Ray will too. Just stay still, Todd, or they'll shoot you."
"Okay, okay. Okay, sir," Todd stammered, "I'm okay."
John and Ray walked on. Coming to a stop, satisfied that they could now have a private conversation, Ray shrugged his shoulders at John—his body language asking: Why do you want to help? Explain.
"Can't have one here without the other, right? Yeah, I just found that out. I touched the Other by accident. Felt the evil inside him, heard it in his voice, his laugh. Same laugh my sister and I heard coming out of my father as he left us to die. He'll try getting to the members of your Unit—he tried to get to Todd."
Ray's head dropped, the disgust on his face visible. "He got to Jack. He's dead."
Ray lifted his head and took in the sunrise, trying to push out the last images of Jack from his mind. John extended his hand to Ray.
"I'm with you, Ray."
__
Ten minutes later, Ray, Rydel, and John stood around the one fire pit now burning inside the camp. What was left of the members of Ray's Unit waited in the distance behind the three. John took a couple of steps closer to Rydel.
"Rydel, your sister has passed. She died the day we left to go after you. Will and I were the only ones who knew. I'm sorry."
Rydel lowered his head and tears fell from his face to the ground. He looked up and wiped his eyes and face with both hands.
"I was hoping she'd be able to hang on until I got back." Glaring at John, Rydel's face became angry, red. "Why did you lie about what my sister said to you, John? Why?"
"Because what she said sounded crazy at the time. But not now…not now, Rydel."
The three remained silent for almost a minute. Ray then slung his Smartround gun over his shoulder and turned to Rydel. "I have a plan of my own to save Him today, Rydel. But the guns and all the ammo you took from the lab—what was your plan?"
Rydel pointed at the mountains.
"From the mountains, I would follow the ones taking Jesus to be crucified and then take out everyone around Him with smartrounds. The ones I recruited with S-7 would go in, get Him, and bring Jesus up into the mountains."
Ray smiled. "Not bad, Rydel. However, you alone would never be able to take down that many targets—it's not as simple as taking a picture, like you're thinking. Put two of my best shooters up there, and they'll hit the targets you're talking about. Then what?"
"Then I would send Him away from here with another Placement chip that I was able to make on my own—a sort of one-way chip with no return."
Rydel reached under his cloak and took out a Placement chip, showing John and Ray. "Where I send Him, it will take Jesus years to travel back to Jerusalem. He'll be safe. Jerusalem will have moved on. His true message will have reached the masses before He returns."
Puzzled, John took a few steps closer to Rydel. "True message, Rydel? What do you mean?"
"When God came to my sister, He told her His Son was to prove that there is a place awaiting us after this life. Christ was meant to leave something behind in the time we are in now, proving just that."
"Leave something?" John asked, still not understanding.
"A reoccurring phenomenon that will happen each year, giving people hope. It's what Christians will worship instead of Christ on the cross."
John and Ray shared a look, taking in all Rydel had said for a few seconds, and then returned their attention back to Rydel as he continued.
"Evil and doubters there will always be; it won't change much in our time. People ignore miracles every day. But people will care more. A greater importance will be put on human life. As a result, a war will be avoided."
"A war?" John quickly asked.
"The one war is coming that will destroy the earth. The Other will kill us all. Christ's Second Coming has to be done in the time we are in now—He must continue and finish what He was sent here to do. Earth will burn if He doesn't—"
"Hey! Hey!"
The three turned to look where the shouting voice came from and could see Sal running in their direction. "Todd's been sent back," Sal said, breathing heavily.
Rydel put a hand on Ray's arm. "We need to go, Ray. It's time. They're going to lead Him to be crucified soon."
__
With their backs to the tents, Adriana, Ben, Sal, and Steve stood in front of Ray, waiting for him to speak.
"The three of us are going after Him," Ray said. "You four gather up all the smartrounds we have, and get to a high point in the mountains overlooking the city."
"What's our game plan, Ray?" Sal asked.
"Lightly take down the soldiers leading Christ to be crucified and anyone near Him. With the rounds we have, we can take down the whole damn city, if need be. After that, make a path for us to leave, take down anyone coming near Him, and take down anyone following us."
"Where do we take Him after that?" Adriana asked.
"We have a Placement chip that will take Him away from here," Ray said before pointing at Steve. "Steve, you're my first shooter." Ray looked over the faces of Adriana, Ben, and Sal. "Who's my second shooter?" Ray asked the three.
Ben and Sal glanced at each other. The two pointed at Adriana. "Adriana's next in shooting off multiple-target smartrounds after Steve. She blows the two of us away, Ray," Sal confessed.
"Okay." Ray gestured to Ben and Sal. "You two are the eyes tracking Jesus."
The four entered the tents behind them to gear up. Ray called out for Rydel, who was standing with John at the fire pit. Rydel trotted over to Ray, a concerned look on his face as he reached him.
"Need to ask you a question before we go."
"Of course, Ray."
"How is it that the Other was able to get to Jack and kill him, but not to me or you?"
Rydel waited before answering, searching for the words in his head, then shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know, Ray. I guess it's just like it is in our time, or any time. If he could get to us all, he would. But he can't. He tried killing me but failed. Maybe the ones with faith are more difficult for him to get to. It could be as simple as that."
__
Alone, Ben prepped the area of a mountain they had all settled on to overlook the city of Jerusalem. Every way in and out of the city could be seen from this vantage point. Ben scanned the territory with his binoculars. He lowered them from his face and started to walk away.
A bloodied hind leg from a horse fell from above and landed in front of Ben. He stumbled backward, staring above at a narrow rock ledge. Standing on the ledge, a figure in a black shroud held the mouth of a small horse shut with his right hand. A large hole of torn flesh in the animal where its right leg should have been dripped blood over the rocky edge where the man stood. The man tilted his head, glaring down at Ben, and spoke to him in English.
"I want you to hear something, Benjamin."
The man removed his hand from the animal's mouth, and the horse let out a cry of terror and pain that sounded almost human. The man snapped the horse's mouth shut again in a flash of movement. The eyes of the horse and Ben connected, the horse eyeing Ben with a look of anguished pain and fear. With his free hand, the man in black pointed an elongated, pitch-black finger down at Ben.
"That will be the sort of sound your sister's boys will make as I rip out Isaac's eyes and burn off Shawn's face if you decide to interfere here. Just walk away, and I will not harm them. The only thing you are going to do in this time is wait to be taken back. I do believe we have an understanding. Am I correct, Benjamin?"
Ben stared up at the man in black, unable to talk or respond in any way. In all his times out in combat, he had never felt the fear that he felt right now—an uncontrollable fear taking over his body and mind.
The man in the black cloak lifted the horse by its face and snapped its neck with one quick motion. He threw the dead animal away, and it landed with a thud at Ben's feet. The black shape turned its back on Ben and was gone.
__
It was still early morning as Ray, Rydel, and John ran past scattered men and women on their way to the city of Jerusalem. Ahead of John and Rydel, Ray stopped so he could listen clearly to a transmission coming through his headset from Sal.
"Ray, they're leading Him through the city already. You need to make up ground!"
Ray yelled at John and Rydel trailing behind. "We need to pick it up—come on!"
The three made it to the city in less than two minutes and did not stop moving once they got there. With adrenaline on their side, they were able to keep running through the city until finally pausing as Ray got another call through his headset.
"Take the street on your left, Ray. The one with the old man sitting on the mat."
John and Rydel followed Ray down the narrow, twisting street with the old man leaning against a cracked wall of stone, sitting on a brown mat. Ray ran past the man, followed by Rydel and then John. As John passed, the old man spoke to him in English.
"If you do this, John, you will kill not thousands but millions in your time. The ones you took an oath to protect. You will kill them all."
John came to an abrupt stop, turned, and walked back toward the old man. "No. I don't believe anything you say. Nothing. Touching you, I felt the evil. I still do. I now believe in Him because of you."
The old man rose from the mat, lifting himself with the agility of a young man, and was in front of John so fast the colonel caught just a blurry glimpse of the man moving.
"If you enter into this, I will have a crowd of God-loving men and women rip off each one of your limbs and eat them in front of you before you die."
"John—come on!"
John turned away from the old man, looking over his shoulder at Ray and Rydel ahead on the twisting street. A handful of women stood on the side of the street—all looking baffled by Ray's ranting in a foreign tongue.
Ray waved for John to hurry. "Let's go, John, let's go!"
John turned to face the old man again, but the man was gone. He whispered toward the spot where the old man had stood. "Fuck you. We're saving Him."
He quickly met up with Ray and Rydel, and the three continued to run, making their way through the city.
They got a brief look ahead at Jesus being led through the city streets on His way to be crucified.
"Okay, we need to get to high ground now," Ray said.
Led by Ray, they raced through a narrow passage out of the city and to the top of a small hill with a view over the city walls. From there, they could see a twisting path leading toward a nearby hill with two suffering men nailed to crosses on the ground. A small gathering of soldiers looked down at the two men, boredom etched on their faces.
Ray glanced over his shoulder at John and Rydel. "This is it. This is our spot. When I give the order, and the people start falling to the ground, we'll go in and get Him before He even gets near that hill they're leading Him to."
Ray lifted his binoculars to his eyes and tracked Jesus being led through the narrow streets of Jerusalem.
__
With His body bent in half under the weight of the crossbeam He was dragging, Jesus crept toward His fated path to be crucified, His crown of thorns dripping blood onto His face and body. With each step He took, His body lowered, and then He finally fell, the crossbeam pinning Him facedown on the ground. Two soldiers behind Jesus reached down, one picking Him up, the other lifting the crossbeam off the ground. The two placed the crossbeam on Jesus's back and screamed at Him to continue walking, and then both men spit in Christ's face.
__
Having seen enough, Ray lowered his binoculars and gave the order to the shooters through his headset.
"Take them down—all of them."
"Ray, the woman pointing up here!" Rydel yelled.
Ray looked through his binoculars to see a woman in a black shawl pointing up at them from inside the city with two Roman soldiers by her side. The two soldiers started to run as Ray spoke into his headset once more.
"And take down the soldiers coming toward us."
The three ran toward the city.
__
At a new vantage point over Jerusalem that Ben suddenly decided was better than the one he had prepped earlier, Adriana stood by Steve's side—the two aiming their Smartround rifles below. Behind them, Sal listened to Ray's orders through his headset while moving closer to Adriana and Steve. "Now, guys. And Ray has two unfriendlies coming his way."
The compact screen slid out from the side of Steve's gun. On the screen, he could make out the two Roman soldiers heading toward Ray's location on the hill. The screen then took a snapshot of the two.
"Got 'em," Steve calmly said.
He tapped a side button on the gun, and a mini keyboard slid out from the other side of the Smartround rifle. On the small keyboard, Steve typed with fluid fingers over the small keys, entering the dosage into the rounds, and the keyboard slid back inside the gun. He pointed his Smartround gun up in the air and fired the weapon. The rounds from the gun shot straight up and then headed toward their targets below.
__
Head bent forward, limping slowly, Jesus passed sad-eyed men and women all crammed together on either side of the narrow stone street that eventually began to widen. Jesus lifted His head slightly to see the young follower John pulling back the hood of his cloak—the young man mixed in with the rest of the crowd. The eyes of the two men met, and John pushed the people in front of him out of the way so he could reach Jesus. He made it through the crowd only to be held back by three Roman soldiers, forcing him down onto the stone street. With his mouth bleeding, John turned his head to face Jesus.
Jesus stared down at him and shook His head at John, silently telling him not to interfere. John ignored the warning, broke free from the guards, got to his feet, and reached out desperately for Jesus. He then suddenly fell to the ground, unconscious, along with the soldiers trying to detain him.
Jesus slowly turned His head over the crossbeam He carried. Behind Him, the men and women lining the path to His crucifixion—and the soldiers leading Him to the cross—began to fall to the ground.
__
On the mountain overlooking the city, Steve calmly took down his targets below with Adriana by his side to clean up anything he missed. But Steve did not miss. Every multiple human target he entered into his Smartround gun—with the aid of its snapshot device—either fell on their sides or landed facedown on the street that Jesus walked. Steve then took a step back, snapped a picture of approaching soldiers, and pointed his gun in the air, shooting off the programmed rounds to take out the soldiers. The burst of pebble-sized rounds arching in the air looked much like an assault of arrows in medieval times, going up and then streaming down to find their targets.
Steve felt the presence of the Other and caught movement from the corner of his eye. He dropped his Smartround gun and instinctively reached for his Glock 19, pointing it toward a ledge above him. The black-cloaked man stood on the narrow strip of stone, staring down at Steve. Steve was only able to see the man's unnerving blue eyes glaring down at him from under the hooded cloak. Then the fear set in as he yelled out to the man without the use of his translator, sounding like a scared child.
"Come down from there!"
"No," the cloaked man flatly said in English.
Adriana heard Steve's raised voice and broke her attention away from her gun's slide-out-screen view of the targets below.
"Steve—what is it?"
Steve turned to Adriana with his mouth open—about to speak—and then disappeared in a swirling mist of the dirt he’d been standing on.
__
The only one left standing on the street was Christ.
From around the corner, John, Ray, and Rydel ran toward Jesus—the crossbeam He was forced to carry still digging into His shoulder. The three stepped over the sedated men, women, scattered children, and soldiers to get to Jesus. Ray grabbed hold of the crossbeam with two hands and heaved it away in a vertical bench-press motion. Behind Ray, Rydel noticed the people and soldiers around them.
"Ray—they're moving!"
Holding Jesus upright, Ray watched as a black mist fell over the people and soldiers on the ground—the mist lifting them up to their feet. With their eyes still closed, they moved awkwardly, trying to fight off the drug inside them, all slowly walking toward Jesus.
"Let's go!" Ray screamed at John and Rydel.
The three turned away from the ones rising around them and faced a Roman soldier standing an inch over seven feet tall. The soldier, muscular to the point of being freakish, wore Roman body armor and a steel faceplate with slits at the eyes.
Ray was unable to reach for his gun while holding up Jesus. Not taking the time to properly program the rounds to target the vulnerable areas on the man's body, John stepped forward and fired repeated smartrounds at the soldier that deflected off the huge man's armor.
"Use your sidearm! Kill him, John!" Ray screamed.
Rydel found a sword on the ground, picked up the heavy weapon, and swiped it at the Roman soldier's legs. The sword glanced off the soldier's protective greaves with a clanging sound and fell out of Rydel's hands.
The Roman soldier picked up the sword and stabbed Rydel in the chest, dropping Rydel to his knees. The sword came out of Rydel's back and pierced through his right calf into a crevice in the stone road, leaving him skewered. The top half of Rydel's body remained upright with his back slightly arched and his arms spread out at his sides, as if waiting to embrace someone. Rydel's lifeless eyes stared up at the heavens—his body displayed on the sword like some kind of offering to the gods.
The old woman in black who had pointed out the three on the hill slipped through the blind, slow-moving crowd. She reached the massive soldier and touched his shoulder. The large man crumbled to the ground. The woman then turned her head, staring at John and Ray with hateful, luminous blue eyes.
__
Seeing Steve disappear next to her, Adriana shook it off. She glanced down at the slide-out screen on her gun and could see that the soldiers, and the people who had lined the streets, were now up and walking. Adriana entered a grouping of targets into her gun and shot the smartrounds into the air. She turned her head toward Ben, who looked fucking out of it.
"Pick up Steve's gun and get into the fight!"
Ben stared at Steve's Smartround gun on the ground.
"Help me, Ben!"
"I can't, Adriana. The Other has too much on me. I—"
Ben disappeared, his Placement chip sending him back to the time he came from.
Adriana frantically entered targets into her Smartround gun, stepped back, and fired the rounds into the air. Behind Adriana, Sal looked through his binoculars, scanning the city below. "Shit! They're all back on their feet?"
Adriana set the next wave of rounds into her gun as Sal walked closer to her, still looking through his binoculars at the city below. Adriana stepped back to fire the rounds into the air and bumped into Sal.
"Fuck out of my way, Sal!"
Sal stepped back—his point of view still homed in on the reawakened crowd and soldiers. He then let the binoculars fall to the ground and screamed at Adriana.
"Save Him—!"
Sal's body and voice vanished. Out of the corner of her eye, Adriana caught Sal being sent back. She fired her rounds in the air. All targets hit, she started to acquire more with her Smartround gun.
Behind her, a man laughed.
An eight-foot-tall figure took two ground-shaking steps toward Adriana as she readied her Smartround gun. The figure leaned his head over Adriana's shoulder, laughing at her from under the black hood of his cloak.
Adriana disappeared in a swirl of dirt and dust.
__
The woman in black laughed at John and Ray. John took a step toward the woman and vanished, gone in a whirlwind of dust. Ray placed Jesus on the ground and ran over to Rydel's body, then reached into a pocket under Rydel's cloak. He ran back to Jesus, tipped back the head of Christ so he could feed Him Rydel's one-way chip, but the chip fell out of his hand. Ray eased Jesus's head back to the ground, spun left, then right, and found the chip on the ground. He reached for it and disappeared.
The old woman stopped laughing, closed her eyes, and fell down face first, crushing her nose.
Lucifer, wearing his long, black, hooded cloak, walked around those fallen on the ground and the slow-walking crowd of men, women, and soldiers now plodding aimlessly. He stood over Christ. The Devil's hooded head tilted toward the black chip on the ground, and he crushed it with his foot. Jesus stood up, and His blood-soaked hair parted away from His face. With one eye swollen shut, He watched Lucifer.
Lucifer then spoke to Jesus.
"I will never let them save you in this time. You will never finish what you were sent here to do."
Lucifer looked down at the crossbeam on the ground. He picked it up effortlessly with one hand, holding it in his palm like an offering. He folded back the hood of his cloak with his free hand, revealing his true face. No alabaster or jet-black skin, but a man in his forties with a fair complexion and simple, smooth features—the way he appeared before his descent. Except for his eyes. The preternatural glowing blue eyes of the Beast stared at Jesus with pure hate.
Careful not to touch Christ, Lucifer placed the crossbeam back across Jesus's shoulders. He leaned his head closer, staring at Jesus curiously for a moment, and then turned his back on Christ. He raised his arm in the air, and another black mist fell over the crowd and soldiers.
Alone, Jesus stood with the crossbeam on His back and waited for what was to come, as all around him returned to their normal state of mind and being. The people no longer felt the effects of the smartrounds, the result of Lucifer's second surge of black mist seeping into each man, woman, and child.
As if nothing had happened, the Roman soldiers pushed Jesus forward. And the ones in the crowd who had gathered to watch the death of the blasphemous man started cheering once more.
Jesus looked to His right and could see Lucifer standing among the cheering people, the Devil appearing as just one more in the crowd, smiling at Jesus with his burning blue eyes from under the hood of his cloak.