Chapter 5

It Comes Like a Thief in the Night

Grand Calead Mall was the biggest, and also the only mall in Calead. Catering to the middle and upper class, you could find anything in here. From simple, everyday items to branded, high-end luxury goods. Six stories tall and shaped like a tetrahedron with a number of gargoyles facing all cardinal directions.

The architect took some cues from the Gothic era, which clashed with the whole futuristic design of Calead. But therein lie its charm. Numerous banners and placates occupied every empty space in front of the mall that day. All promoting the same DSD Concert.

“Awesome,” Sam whistled. Though whether it was towards the event or the hysteric girls screaming at the top of their lungs with an autographed album no one knew.

“Oh, cool! They even got free album for ticket owners!” Jude picked one of them, where the band’s main singer, Shakti, was sitting on top of the head of a Baphomet. A goat- headed pagan deity.

“Hey, man. You guys entering or what?” a demour man with his face painted white in black leather outfit called out to them. “If you ain’t got business then piss off.”

“Is that how you talk to paying customers?” Makoto said, handing him her ticket.

“Whatever man. Tickets,” he lazily ripped the edge of each tickets and handed it back. “Get in. They’re up to the second song.”

A trumpet sounded behind Jude.

“Oh, that’s mine. Gotta take this,” Sam walked away while putting the phone beside his ear. “You three go on ahead. I’ll catch up!”

As soon as they entered the door, the music blasted them like a typhoon.

The function hall used for the concert had been made over from the bottom up. A huge runic circle had been painted over the whole floor with phosphorus paint that glowed in the dim lighting. Bright, colorful light danced in the darkness, illuminating the audience and the stage. The stage itself was covered in animal skin with their owner’s heads still attached.

The air was hot, brimming with heat and sweat.

The vocalist, Shakti’s voice, was very powerful and guttural. When he sang, it was like his music penetrated their very soul.

The DSD’s theme was dark and cynical, yet their song could somehow draw even those who did not like the genre of music. As evidenced by the eclectic gathering of people in that concert.

After an awesome guitar solo by Brahma, Shakti’s co-guitarist, the song ended and shouts of reverence filled the air.

“Thank you, fellow denizens of the dark. Your tributes are most delicious,” he said into the mic with a wet, wispy voice. “And now for our next song, we’ll do a new one. Fresh out of hell.”

“Over the Desert of Purgatory.”

The colored lights turned off, leaving only a plain white one shining on Shakti.

“The great demon rose with my soul in his hands, shouting blasphemy to the very image that spawned him,” he began with the rising tone of his guitar. “O wilt thou rejoice at the death of the lamb of Nazareth! The four had rode beyond the horizon, and the final trumpet has rung its unholy resonance!”

A jolt of pain shot through Jude’s head. It was enough to make him fall to his knees.

“Aaargh...!”

Aleksandra, who had been silently watching the musicians all this time patted his back with concern. Makoto was too preoccupied with shouting out the song.

“Jude, are you okay?”

He answered quickly, shaking his head. “I’m just feeling a bit woozy.”

“Come on. Let’s get some fresh air,” the graceful girl let him lean over her shoulder and led the way. She took him to the bathroom a floor above the hall because of the long wait for the ones on the same floor. He washed his face while she waited outside.

“Thanks. I feel better now,” he said after.

“Don’t mention it.”

“You know, I noticed that you’ve been a bit awkward with Sam and Makoto. Relax, Makoto is very blunt. Well, more like stubborn and blunt but she is a great girl once you know her. And Sam...well, he’s just being Sam.”

“Oh no, I have nothing against them. It’s just…,” the girl sighed. “I’m not used to going out with friends. My father…does not like me doing that. He told me that friends just hold you back.”

“Sounds like a very lonely man.”

“You have no idea,” she exhaled saidly. “His idea of a great time is sitting in his office looking over his collection of bizarre and awful items.”

“We all have our hobbies,” Jude said, leaning on the wall. “Speaking about hobbies, what do you think about the show?” He asked her expectantly.

“It’s...okay.”

Even though her sentence only contained those two words, He sensed something strange about her demeanor.

“But…?”

“What but?”

“Well, your voice told me that there’s something wrong.”

“How did you know?”

“That’s how Makoto acts when she has something to extort me with. I’m very sharp about these things,” Jude said meaningfully.

She replied with a sweet chuckle. “Haha, you’re really honest. (Sigh)..Very well, if you ask me, the song is very…unsettling.”

“Well, they are singing about pretty gruesome stuff. But they do really powerful ballads too, if you believe.”

“No, it’s not that I don’t like them. Surprisingly, I find the music strangely…familiar.”

“Familiar? Have you ever heard it before?”

“It’s hard to say. The melody somehow feels…nostalgic. However, that’s not what makes me feel uncomfortable,” she put a hand on her chest and smiled grimly. “His voice felt like it disturbed a part of me. A part of me that I don’t quite…like.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it’s something that sometimes makes me want to…do something really…” her voice began to trail off. “…really…bad.”

Suddenly, the mall’s lighting was turned off.

The two of them heard the collective gasp of people surprised by the sudden power outage.

“Ouch!” Again, Jude’s head trobbed, but this time there was a voice. No. Voices, to be exact. Like something heard from a cave. Deep, echoing, and wrong. It buzzed louder and louder. So loud that it drowned everything.

“Aagh...aaagh!”

All of a sudden, Jude lost his strength and collapsed on the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. The last thing he saw was Aleksandra’s increasingly blurry face, seemingly shouting at him.

On the rooftop of the mall, a solitary figure stood on the edge of a gargoyle’s head. Standing firm against the wind. His hand tucked into the pocket of a Blue Hyena jacket while the other one holding his phone which was beeping rhythmically. A picture of a red phone shone angrily at the screen. The name written atop the phone ebbed and weaved as if it was alive. His expression was indescribable.

“So, as it is written. It begins.”

Sam looked up to the heavens. Eyes filled with worry. He had begun to be weary of this role he had taken. Nevertheless, the event that was to come was not something that he could stop. But still, he worried.

“If…it is your will, O Lord,” he said quietly, his voice filled with sadness. “Let this cup pass him by.”

He looked at the graying sky above and somehow knew of the futility of his request. “But if it is inevitable...then give him the strength to pass this ordeal.”

Down in the lab beneath Aquila’s Tower, the Conceptual Quantum Computer known as the Apple of Eden rumbled. Long copper cables with the thickness of an adult’s body snaked through the ground below. Feeding power into the monstrous machine using energy from the very earth itself. It seethed and breathed like a giant dragon while people in white coats moved about its scales. Heeding to its every needs like servants.

“Gentlemen, to your positions.”

Professor Vorsheim’s thick accent boomed from the glass window of the Second Floor of the Observation Deck where he stood. His expression like a happy child, but at the same time nervous. His creation, the Apple of Eden towered in the fashion of a giant tree made out of coiling cables with multitudes of screens. Its main interface was a holographic screen which showed its status. Currently, it was idle.

“Recheck all variables,” he ordered again. Thousands of simulations were already done beforehand. All eventualities checked and logged. Still, the real thing would be different. For that reason, everything must be perfect.

The white coats sitting on both the First and Second Floor of the Observation Deck did not question his order. They lived in a world where precision was everything. And on this day, they would see the culmination of all their hard work these past few decades pay off. Thus, nothing can go wrong.

After the last man finalized his status update, they all turned towards the Professor.

“Gentlemen. Today, we as humans will pluck upon the Tree of Knowledge its fruit. A new era will come and we…will be its pioneers. Are you all ready for this?” the man raised his arms and yelled. “Let us begin!!”

Immediately all the crew members turned to their respective stations and began the booting up sequence.

“Begin the First Phase,”

A woman sitting at the very left began flipping small levers on her panel up. The Apple of Eden rumbled into life, as if a giant beast waking from its slumber. Rows of mainframe machines hummed in unison below them.

“Temperature check.”

“Temperature still at the limit of optimal operation,” the researcher in charge of the cooling system which used Liquid Helium to cool the computer said.

“All conditions green.”

“Excellent. Let’s move on to the Second Phase.”

While everyone’s attentions were focused on what they were doing, one of the assistants sitting behind Vorsheim stealthily inserted a small USB from his pocket into the USB slot on his panel. A bestial, toothy grin appeared on his face as the executable batch contained within the USB did its work. His eyes shone yellow for the briefest of moments.

A few moments later, Martin, Professor Vorsheim’s right hand man noticed that a program he did not remember to run was booting up on his screen.

“Professor? A program I don’t recognize is running,” he said as he tried to stop it. However, the program opened more and more windows in the screen, multiplying so fast that it took him aback.

Another researcher yelled in distress. “Professor, it’s -! It’s taking over?!”

“Taking over? Egads, man! Apple of Eden is running independent of the Calead network!!”

“No! It’s not an attack from outside. It’s coming from inside!”

“What the hell?!” Vorsheim shouted angrily. “Stop all running systems!”

“I can’t! It’s locking us out!!”

“This reading -? It’s - It’s impossible! Apple of Eden is refusing all commands?!”

“Professor!” Martin slowly stood up, his mouse agape. “Look - !”

“What are you -” he began to yell at his assistant, but then stopped as he saw tumorous bulbs and all manner of unspeakable things appeared out of thin air and began to assimilate the Apple of Eden.

“What the hell?! What the fucking hell is that?!” Another man cursed when he saw what was happening.

“Cut off the power from the whole system, goddammit!”

“It’s no use. The computer has already hacked the Power Station and is redirecting all power into itself!”

“How?! It has no connection to the fucking internet! The virtualized machines are sandboxed in their own local servers!!” Vorsheim shouted angrily. “Shit! I’ll do it myself!”

But when he was about to cut the power, his hand caught nothing. The all-important lever was missing. Complex machineries and bare metals that weighed more than ten tons in all morphed into something unspeakable in front of their very eyes. Suddenly, letters in deep red began to drown the holographic screen before them. Repeating the same words over and over again. The words of the serpent that tempted the First Man to sin.

Ye shall be as Gods

At that point an assistant screamed, bleeding profusely from a missing arm. Another came from one who promptly exploded without warning. A blonde scientist went mad and began clawing his face, tearing his nose and eyes before a hole appeared in his chest. The laboratory was soon painted by splatters of blood and brain matter.

Vorsheim fell back as a man was squashed flat against the glass window and his neck bitten off by something invisible. He shouted to Martin. “Raise the emergency bulkhead!!”

Martin grabbed a nearby hammer and broke the glass protecting a red button and quickly pressed it. Within seconds, thick bulkheads rose from the floor, separating the Second Floor of the Observation Deck and the First Floor.

“O-open the door! Please!! God, it’s eating us!”

As the bulkheads slammed into position, the surviving researchers on the second floor looked at one another, their hearts beating so fast they made them dizzy.

“W-whatever that was, they’re not getting through ten inches of solid steel,” Martin said, trying to reassure himself. Moments after he said that, he saw horror in the faces of his colleagues as they looked at him. Suddenly, he felt an excruciating pain in his abdomen.

Behind him, a man in white coat with yellow eyes grinned. His hand had gone through Martin’s stomach, spilling blood and bile everywhere.

“AAAHH!!!!”

Vorsheim felt something hot flow in his trousers. He reached desperately for the door, crawling on all four when a figure in dark blue robe appeared before him. A pair of tired grey eyes looked at him from under a hood. The mysterious person then spoke with a voice that chilled his heart.

“Can you hear that song? That wondrous mad song?” He began as he hummed a strange melody, his fingers tapping rhythmically to the screams of terror and death that was happening in the Observation Deck.

“Song? W-what song?”

“She sings to us. To you. To the world,” then he paused, his eyes narrowed in disappointment. “Ah, I can see terror in your eyes, Professor. Terror. Which, I think is unbecoming of one so brave as to encroach into God’s domain. If you are not prepared for the danger, why bother?”

Beside him were two figures wearing two similar cloaks.

They were definitely not human. One had the head of a horse with yellowing teeth and fearsome claws. Another had the head of a leopard and burning flames as eyes. An emblem depicting a winged horse entrapped by a golden bridle was sewn on each of their cloaks.

The animal-headed men snarled and growled. Hunger glazed their eyes.

Under the unexplained circumstances, a small, terrified voice finally managed to dislodge from Vorsheim’s throat. “W-what are you? How did you get in here?! There should be guards outside!”

The man voiced disappointment with a curt shake of the head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk...It won’t do, Professor, for one so learned to ask such mundane questions,” The man dipped his finger in the blood coming out from one of the assistants. “However, I will tell you this. What I am, is a thief. And your machine is my prize. As for yours, dear Professor,” The hooded man marked Vorsheim’s lips with the blood. “The prize of your arrogance…is death.”

The horse headed man moved forward. Without an inch of mercy it ripped apart the Professor’s body as if it was paper. It then feasted on his innards with relish. The other one with the head of a leopard licked his lips as he cornered the remaining researchers to a corner.

Undisturbed by the gruesome acts of his companions, the grey eyed man looked at the giant copper tree. He smiled a cryptic smile as the whole place shook and rumbled from the abnormality happening around him.

“And as we all know…that the Day of the Lord comes,” the old man laughed to a joke that only he understood.

“…like a thief in the night.”

On the streets of Calead, all eyes were directed to the sky, a feeling of dread took over each and everyone’s hearts.

A gathering of black thundercloud began to converge and cover the whole city. The clouds rumbled as they rode through the sky, swallowing the sun. Then a hole was ripped out in the center of the conglomeration. A black, flaming sun came into being, like a giant eye observing the mortals slithering on the ground.

Then, red thunder stroke the ground. Followed by another, and another. Taking victims where they land. They snaked through the ground, scarring the earth with impunity. An earthquake ensued, crushing buildings and twisting steel.

People panicked, cried, and prayed. All of them trying to run away from their impending doom. Nevertheless, death came for them all equally.

The earth groaned and split with a loud crack. Like the breaking of the bread, the city was mercilessly torn apart. Cars, bikes, people, all worldly things that made up Calead were swallowed by the earth.

The world was wreathed in chaos, when suddenly everything…stopped.

There was silence. Deep, pervading silence. For a few seconds, nothing on earth breathed or moved. No wind blew, no dog barked, no words uttered. Even the screams of the people could be heard no more.

A perfect stillness, like before there were day and night.

And then…the dark sun blinked.

Its dark light spread with the incredible speed, enveloping the world with its sinister glow.

And then...

...the world ended.