Book One

The Tower Of Tejahl

Chapter One

The Storm

“Please don’t do this, Isaac.”

Anthony’s voice crackled through the phone from the bad reception in the desert. The gale force winds from the tornado didn’t help the signal strength either. Isaac’s knuckles whitened around the steering wheel as he wrenched the car around yet another roadblock.

“I’ve got to, Anthony. It’s my brother this time, not some faceless profile. I won’t ignore this anymore.”

“You don’t understand, not one person has ever returned. They’ve sent close to a hundred people and every single one is still unaccounted for. They don’t want to admit it, but I know. Finn is gone, Isaac.”

The road stretched out in a straight line in front of Isaac, splitting the giant swathes of desert on either side in two. A tornado swirled on the road where the ground met the horizon. Lightning scattered across the sky every other heartbeat.

“Do you get what I’m saying, Isaac? No one comes back from this, not even you!”

Isaac slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The tornado churned straight ahead. There was no going back now. The noise of the engine and the cacophony of wind and thunder almost drowned out the speakers on the phone, but he could still make out Anthony’s shrill voice beneath it all.

“You should be thankful I went to you and not the IC guys, you would’ve been in Guantanamo by now if I had.”

Isaac only had eyes for the tornado. “Finn’s on the other side, I just know it.”

A couple seconds passed before Anthony spoke again. “Isaac, I’m worried for you. You haven’t been yourself lately, you’ve cut everyone off. Even your family… Did you know your secretary’s been calling me every day for the past week? I don’t even know how she got my number, much less my name… who have you been telling about the storms?”

“How would you know how I’ve been doing? They sent you to spy on me as well? I thought better of you, Anthony, I really did.”

“I came to you! I haven’t told anyone about this, I swear, none of my bosses know.”

Isaac continued as if Anthony hadn’t spoken. “What, spying on the recruits we sent into the storms to die wasn’t good enough for you, Anthony? You had to add one more?”

“If the recruits we sent all died then your brother is dead as well!”

“That’s not true.” Isaac pressed the phone against his ear until it hurt.

“Finn is dead, Isaac. You’ll never see your brother again, you have to accept that!”

“Accept what? I don’t have to accept shit, Anthony. Fuck you!” He threw the phone so hard against the windscreen it cracked into a spider web of jagged lines that completely blocked the view out of the car.

Isaac cursed and stomped on the brakes. The car lurched to a stop and Isaac pushed down on the door handle. The moment it opened, the car door wrenched off into the wind, flying towards the tornado.

A whirlwind of papers, books and garbage exploded out of his car as every item he had hoarded for the past several months lifted up on the wind that came in through the now gaping hole in his car.

Isaac looked down in shock and for a brief second it looked as if some of the papers were passing through his midsection as if he was a ghost. A notebook smacked him in the face and he swiped it aside. By the time he had wrestled it away every last thing not bolted down in his car had gone with the wind.

Isaac held onto the notebook as it yearned to join its brethren on their journey. Several circled notes were scribbled on it. One note read “Patterns inconclusive”, another read “Chronological fuckery” and yet another read “Find the storm!” The last note had been circled more times than the others, each circle in a different ink than the last.

It was just his own research, not the documents he had stolen from Anthony and the government. Not that it mattered now anyways: Here he was, the storm right in front of him. He decided to let go of the notebook but even before he could do so, it slipped between his fingers as if through water.

Isaac stepped out of the car and watched it fly. No, he had let go of it, that was it. Physical objects couldn’t flow like water.

The light from the headlamps of his car flickered and he turned in time to see his car lift up in the air, lurch around and head straight for him. He had no time nor instinct for what to do besides gape his mouth open in astonishment. The car flew, but not him?

The car crashed into him. He closed his eyes at the last second and didn’t see anything but he could still hear the scraping of metal even over the wind as the suspension failed and the undercarriage of the car was dragged across the asphalt. Despite the gut wrenching sounds he felt nothing.

He opened his eyes and turned to see the car sail away as if it hadn’t a worry left in the world now that it too was free of Isaac.

Sand and dust moved in around the car and soon everything was veiled by a thick grey. Everything grew darker and darker. The noise rose to a deafening crescendo. The wind seemed to affect him little but every now and then some small grain pelted him across bare skin and he raised his arm to shield his face.

Isaac started walking. First a tentative step, then several more until he got a good gait going. He’d be damned if he was to be caught lying down. His eardrums popped. The lashings of the wind grew more and more frequent. He felt like a reef at sea. The noise rose to nigh unbearable levels. Just as he thought he could take it no more, as he prepared to lay down and curl up into a ball, everything stilled.

Silence.

"Isaac"