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Elias led me from the chamber we had been standing in into a dark tunnel. I paused at the threshold as Elias walked on. He did not turn back; he merely walked deeper into the tunnel, illuminated only by pale bulbs casting everything with a sickly yellow light. About fifty feet distant, Elias half-turned, a shadow within shadows. I noticed, then, decade-old dried blood caked onto both sides of the walls. It was as if that blood had been painted. Tell-tales splatters hinted at some sort of struggle, long ago. A struggle the Community had not cared to clean up after.
There was little else to do but step forward, following after Elias. At my approach, he turned and continued to walk.
I tried to ignore the blood, which had likely come from the “Realization” Elias had spoken of fifteen years ago. Why they’d decided to leave it there, I had no idea. I decided not to ask about it, instead walking quickly down the tunnel until I caught up with Elias. We walked shoulder-to-shoulder for a few moments before he broke the silence.
“We number thirty-eight right now,” he said. “Including children.”
“Children?”
“You shall see.”
The thought that this man had children was horrifying in and of itself.
We had come to the end of the tunnel, which opened up into a large chamber. It was another recreation room, only larger, filled with about fifteen women. Three sat on a couch in the center of the room – two took up another couch, while the rest stood, all facing the door, as if they had been waiting for Elias. Or, perhaps, me.
I scanned the faces, but I saw that Elias had told the truth: there were no men, not even among the children.
I had no idea what to do in that moment. I only stood there next to Elias, unmoving.
“This is the Community,” he said. “The Chosen of the New World. When the time comes we will leave the darkness behind and strike into the light. The world will be remade once more into a land of green and warmth. The cold and gray shall pass away; a new era shall dawn – the rebirth of humanity begins here.”
All of the women stared with vacuous eyes. Except for one.
She stood in a far corner by herself. Her blue eyes burned with extreme hatred, even as the others look flat and lifeless. It was an anger she didn’t bother to mask – the kind of hatred that could only be nursed by years of pain and resentment. She was perhaps twenty-five years old and had long, unkempt brown hair.
Elias, however, did not heed the woman with the burning blue eyes.
“How much longer?” one of the women asked confidently. She was tall, with blonde hair, and was perhaps thirty-five years old. She sat on the couch between two other women. I instantly pegged her as a leader. “Are these the Outsiders you prophesied about?”
Elias said nothing for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Yes, my dear Lyn – the Outsiders have come. The End draws near.”
Instantly, the room broke into excited – and perhaps frightened – whispers. The woman who had been staring angrily at Elias now looked shocked. Her eyes fell to the floor. I had no idea why she grabbed my attention so much. Maybe I was looking for anyone who could come over to my side. I needed any ally I could get. I had no weapon to defend myself with – nothing but my bare hands. Running was my only option, but how far would I get? Bunker 84 was the home of everyone here, and I wasn’t familiar with it. I would be running blind.
I was outnumbered. All I had were the words in my mouth. Any challenge to Elias’s authority would probably lead to my getting killed. But his talking about prophecy and dreams – these sounded like abilities that could be imparted by the xenovirus. After all, I had dreamed things about the Wanderer because of the Elekai virus inside of me.
And with Elias’s apparent connection with Askala – was it possible that he was my counterpart?
I decided to find out once and for all.
“Elias – have you ever been in a Blight before?”
Elias frowned, and appeared puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“A Blight,” I said. “Maybe you have never heard them called that name before, but they are outside. They are areas of land that have been taken over by xenofungus. Sometimes, the virus that creates this fungus can infect people and morph them into something else entirely. Sometimes its violent, but other times, the virus can make someone possess abilities they didn’t have before. Like communicating with the Voice.”
As the women watched, Elias frowned in thought. After a while, he turned, motioning me forward.
“We can speak of this in my office.”
It was the last place I wanted to go, but at least I had touched on something. If Elias had been in a Blight, it could explain why he had the ability to prophesy. Askala could have infected him with the virus, directly or indirectly. It would explain why he believed such crazy things – not that people had to be infected with the xenovirus to believe crazy things. But it would explain how he knew about Askala. If all that were true, it didn’t bode well for my future. As long as I could keep Elias talking, though, I might be able to buy enough time to find a solution.
Again, I looked at the woman who was alone in the corner. I was sure of it now, by her eyes. The eyes of the others were dull, hollow. Hers...
...still had a soul.
I wondered: could all of these women also be infected with the xenovirus? Howlers were easy to spot by their completely white eyes, but these people seemed to be something in between.
I felt the woman was trying to say something. I wanted to know what, but that would have to come later.
If there was a later.
***
CONNECTED TO THE COMMONS was a door leading to a small office. Elias walked inside, flipping on the lights. I followed him inside, sick to my stomach. A pale bulb hung over a cluttered, dusty desk. The walls were covered with grime. The sickly smell of sweat hung in the stuffy air.
Elias turned, regarding me as he sat in a simple wooden chair. The computer that had been in this office was long gone. Wires spilled from a hole in the wall like a mass of tentacles. The copper of the wiring glinted in the light.
I turned my attention back to Elias, who weighed me with intense brown eyes. He steepled his fingers. He wore a coy smile, revealing several yellowed teeth.
“Are you afraid, Alex? Do not lie to me; I can tell.”
The door to the room was still open, allowing me to hear the women whispering.
“No.”
“Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes.”
Elias’s voice was silken, yet deadly.
“I have no idea what will happen,” I said. “But I’m not afraid.”
Elias waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, he gestured. “Go on.”
“I am afraid of what might happen to my friends.”
“You do not want to fail them. Do you?”
I said nothing. I felt as if this were already over. Elias held all of the cards and none of us were leaving this place. We were all dead. It was the not knowing how we were to die that was the most horrible part.
“Why did you kill all of the men?” I asked.
“We men, Alex – we are darkness.” Elias shuddered upon saying this. “Men do not obey the call of the Voice, so it is men that must be killed. Only I answered the call – along with the women you see here today. Some were just children when the Uprising started. And not even all women obey the call. I cannot say why this is – perhaps some genetic difference between the sexes is the root cause. Maybe the Voice herself does not like men.”
“Why would the Voice choose you?”
Elias shook his head. “I cannot answer that. Perhaps she saw a means to use me, to further her ends – to hasten the Ascension. I cannot dare to know her purpose outside what she reveals to me. All I have to go on is the Prophecy of the Five, which ushers in the Ascent.”
Elias’s mentioning of the prophecy reminded me that Elias had only captured five of us. I only wondered who escaped his net – and what they were doing to rescue the rest of us.
“When does the Voice speak to you?” I asked.
“At night, when I dream. It’s not even that I understand the words. I never do. I only understand – the intent. It first happened when I was sixteen, the night after my first recon.”
“It came as a result of going outside,” I said.
“Yes,” Elias said. “We left by the bottom entrance at the base of the mountain. You cannot go out that way anymore; it was collapsed during the Realization. Nonetheless, my team and I were visiting neighbor Bunker 83, about fifty miles to the east. They needed extra men for a mission they were going to undertake. A mission to Ragnarok Crater itself.”
I started. “Wait. You went to Ragnarok Crater?”
Perhaps he was infected with...something. This would have been fifteen years ago – Bunker 84 fell in 2045. Only I didn’t know if the xenovirus would have been evolved enough by 2045 to infect Elias and make him a pawn of Askala. I guessed it was possible. Bunker One fell in 2048, three years after that, to a swarm of mutated animals and crawlers. Maybe the xenovirus was starting to become more advanced by 2045, at least in the immediate area surrounding the Crater. It had taken it a while to spread to the Mojave.
“Did anything strange happen while you were at the Crater?” I asked.
“It was a sight,” Elias said. “I don’t think the Bunker authorities planned on me going. But I sort of got caught up in it.” He smiled. “I still remember the airplane ride there, watching the clouds sail by as we got there in mere hours. We landed vertically near the rim, and the scientists we were guarding took samples. We returned not thirty minutes later.”
“Nothing happened besides that?”
Elias shrugged. “Not that I could see. But...I just remember it being so beautiful, Alex. So majestic. An entire field of fungus, red and pink and every color imaginable. I’d never seen anything like it, a boy who had grown in a cold gray world of metal. It was as if the very ground were afire. I felt something awaken in me at just the sight. I wanted to go down into the Crater itself, but I was forced back onto the plane. I remember feeling an emptiness, leaving that place behind. A sadness I could not explain.”
I grew quiet at Elias’s story. A lot of what he’d said reminded me of my own vision given by the Wanderer, when the sleeping spores were released by the Xenolith. There, everything had made sense, and I felt a sense of connection with the Elekai. Maybe the same thing had happened for Elias only with the Radaskim. I thought of how easily our positions could have been reversed. Elias was just a tool of Askala – could he fight against her will even if wanted to? Could I fight against the Wanderer, even if I wanted to? I had agreed to help fight Askala. The Wanderer had given me that choice, at least.
Something told me that Elias hadn’t had that choice. It was in the nature of the Radaskim to conquer. To control.
“I began having the dreams the night I returned,” Elias said. “Dreams about the Crater. Dreams about a Voice, speaking to me...”
Elias paused. I waited for him to continue. But he didn’t. It was as if something...stopped him from going on.
“I will say this much,” Elias said. “The Voice is the reason for all of this. The Community. The Realization. And it will be the reason for the Ascension.”
“So the Voice is trying to use you to take over the world?”
Elias shrugged. “I do not pretend to know her will. No mortal can. But yes – she has chosen the Community for this purpose. The reason why is a mystery. We of the Community also go by the name of ‘the Chosen,’ but informally we are the Community. We are the Chosen of the Voice, and we do her bidding. The fact that the five of you are here confirms that the prophecy she gave me is true.”
I remembered Elias saying that he had received this prophecy two days ago – about the same time Ashton had tried transmitting to Bunker 84.
“You would have heard our transmissions,” I said. “You didn’t prophesy anything.”
Elias shook his head. “I know there is nothing I can say to prove it to you. Askala spoke to me in a dream and let me know of your arrival. How do you think we knew to come up to meet you?”
“And by meet you mean attack?”
“I must safeguard the Community. None of you have been harmed, but I take safety very seriously.”
For some reason, I believed Elias. Maybe he hadn’t heard any radio transmissions, and Askala had known we were coming. The question was how. Then, I realized.
“The dragon.”
Elias looked at me questioningly.
“We were attacked by a dragon. The dragon could have let Ask...” I stopped myself, remembering not to say her name. “The dragon could have let the Voice know that we were coming.”
“Yes, it very well could have,” Elias admitted. “Indeed, the dragon, Chaos, was part of my vision, and that attack did happen two days ago. Whatever the case, I am right, in that the Ascension will begin soon.”
“You can do your Ascension without us,” I said. “I want me and my friends to be released.”
Elias regarded me with cold eyes for a moment before answering. “Let me tell you something, Alex. I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to kill any of you. I believe you’ve come here for a purpose. And nothing shall be done until the Voice commands it. I sense that she has some purpose for you – something beyond what even I can speak or know.”
Elias’s eyes gleamed, filled with some sort of maniacal passion. He believed fully in what he was doing. It was not an act. I wasn’t sure whether Elias was merely a madman or if he was truly an agent of Askala.
“Let me ask you another question, Alex,” Elias said. “Have you been inside a Blight?”
I nodded, after a moment. “Yes.”
“And what did you find inside that Blight? Darkness? Light? Can you, who haven’t been marked, know the difference between the two?”
“Of course I know the difference.”
“And how do you know that what you have found is good? A feeling? Feelings are nothing more than chemicals in the brain. You must be marked by the truth, or you do not know the difference between good and evil.”
“Did the Voice tell you that as well?”
Elias nodded. “The Voice is truth. I am the mouth of the Voice. Therefore, whatever I speak is true.”
“And men cannot be marked by the Voice.”
“I tried to save them. But they only went insane. There can only be one Prophet. Nevertheless, they had to be killed so that they couldn’t pose a danger to the others.”
“What about me, then?”
“I have already said. I have no intent of killing you. I...sense something within you that I hadn’t in the others. Not that you are marked but...something similar. Something...dangerous. Yet it is not darkness. At least, not any darkness that I know.”
I had no idea what Elias was talking about. The only thing I did know was that he had mentioned my friends.
“You’ve spoken with them?”
Elias did not answer that, and I realized he had not meant to say so much. I focused on what Elias had been referring to. I was infected with my own version of the xenovirus – the Elekai version. Elekai. Radaskim. Could it be that two pieces of the Xenominds’ cosmic chess game were staring each other in the eyes this very moment? Did Elias know that? What would happen when he, or Askala, realized this?
“If men are so bad, as you say, then why are you still alive?”
“I am Chosen,” Elias said. “I do not deny my evil. And evil, sometimes, is even useful. Any time something evil must be done, I do so that the women may remain pure.”
I said nothing. I was so creeped out about this that there was nothing I could say. Besides, how could I argue with madness?
“Will you let us go free?” I asked.
Elias paused, as if considering that. “Not until all is accomplished. The Community’s time to leave Bunker 84 is drawing near. But we cannot do anything until every part of the Ascension is enacted. In time, the darkness will be conquered. I will see to that.”
“How do you plan on leaving the Bunker? You said the entrance below was caved in.”
“How indeed,” Elias said, with a smile. “We have our ways, as you soon shall see.”
Suddenly, Elias stood. “Come. I have more to show you. Maybe you will begin to see that what I say isn’t madness.”
I had my doubts about that. All the same, Elias walked past me and there was nothing I could do but follow him out the door.