Great White Throne (28 page)

Another machine approached. “Zafar al-Saud.” Don pointed to another chamber. “That one.”

The android holding him rushed away.

And so it went, name after name. They passed in seconds, but Don paused when Aisha was presented to him. She writhed in the machine’s arms. But it did nothing.

Don put his hand to his chin. “This pretty one was supposed to die with the Mahdi, but I’ll keep her. She’ll make a good trophy.”

Aisha opened her mouth as if to shout, but no words came. Her red face was shaking furiously.
 

“Hold her to the side for now,” Don commanded, and more androids holding men filed through. Most were unconscious, but a few flailed like Aisha. It didn’t matter—each one found himself in a chamber, pierced by the dragon’s spirit.

When they were all gone, Don turned back to me. His black eyes burned. “What’s your choice?”

I felt the universe compressing around me. All the darkness and evil and power were here, in Don’s command. “Why me?”

“Because you’ve served me well, Elijah.”

“You’re a liar.”

Don laughed. “The best there is. And so are you. Don’t you know the enemy called you from before the creation of this world? You were meant to be like your forerunner, like Elijah the Prophet. You were meant to serve the enemy. He gave you the gift of sight. He planted the seeds of greatness in you, and what have you done with it?
You
brought the virgin to me in Rome.
You
showed me the places where the order hid.
You
put the Captain in my hands in Geneva.”

“No!” I shouted. But I couldn’t think, couldn’t pray.
 

“
You
joined Azazel, fought with me in war.
You
helped kill the Mahdi.
You
returned with my son. What more could I ask?”

“No, no.” I stammered. “That’s not—”

His words battered into me again. “Why else would I honor you now? Why else would I want you beside me? You are highly gifted of God’s creations, and you have served me. Well done, my faithful servant.”

“You’re a liar,” I said, but was it true? The android released me, and I fell to my knees. I tried to remember, tried to see the light, the white throne.
God, I’m here
.
You must be here. You never fail, you never leave. I’m sorry for how I’ve failed. Forgive me, please. Show me truth.

YOU ARE MINE.
Jesus—His words, more like a sword than a voice.

I surged to my feet, unable to suppress a smile. Don stepped back.

TELL HIM YOU WILL SPEAK FOR HIM.

“I will speak for you.”

Don blinked in surprise. Then he looked over his shoulder. A bowl-shaped helmet was there, like the one I had used weeks ago in Don’s tower in Geneva. This bowl was made entirely of black fibers, where the other had been translucent.

It all made sense. God wanted me here. He wanted me to speak to the world. “I will speak for you,” I repeated.

Don turned back to me, and his lips turned slowly into a smile. “Yes, yes Elijah, you will.” He paused. “Reboot your precept.”

Fear struck me. With my precept on, wouldn’t he control me? Prayers rose up and bubbled over inside of me. An unexpected word slipped from my lips: “
Hosanna.
”

“What was that?” Don asked.

I kept my face blank.

“Your maker stopped listening long ago, Eli.” He stepped closer, his beautiful face sneering down at me. “I told you. This world is mine now. The angels are fighting a battle they’ll lose, because their god is not coming this time. If anyone would sense him coming, it would be me. If you try to say anything against me, you will watch Naomi suffer before she dies.”

“Okay,” I swallowed.

“Good.” He pressed his fingers to my temples. “Turn on your precept. Now.”

“V … reboot.”
 

INFORMATION HIT ME like an avalanche. With my precept on, my mind churned at twice the speed. I saw more. I heard more. And, most important, I
felt
Naomi. Her precept was on—maybe forced on—but either way, our sync was there. The data told me she was slipping back into consciousness from whatever the android had injected.

“Excellent,” Don said. “It’s time to address the world.”
 

I hesitated. He sounded so sure. Was this really what the Lord wanted from me?
Jesus, how can I speak, when he is in my precept? How—?

“You underestimated me,” Don said. “I told you, he’s not listening. Nothing, no one, can stop me now.” His gaze locked onto me. This time he wasn’t smiling. He was concentrating.

A command entered my precept:
Come here
. The words were Don’s, unspoken and impossible to resist.
 

I stepped forward. Another step. The bowl-shaped helmet hung before me, dangling from the Dome and the dragon above.
 

Another command:
Put it on
.

My hands lifted to the helmet’s sides. I couldn’t stop. I tried to speak, tried to pray. Don’s presence crowded out everything else. My arms shook violently, fighting back, resisting.

Don’s words slammed into my mind:
I don’t care what you believe, Eli.
Didn’t any of the order tell you that? I care only about what you do, and this time, you will obey me.
 

He lifted his hand and tapped his fingers in the air. I looked in horror as my hand mirrored his. I was nothing but the puppet, my precept the strings, and Don the master.

GOD!
I shouted inside. My inner voice sounded small, weak, distant.

Don answered:
You will say what I say. Think only what I allow you to think.
Connect now.

And then I was lowering the bowl over my head. I was feeling it push and prod against my skull.

A shot rang out, the sound close but muted. I saw a hole appear in Don’s forehead. I saw him fall back. I saw a man slam into him. But all of that was minuscule, because I was watching it through an ocean. It was the ocean of minds in the universe, just as I’d seen it in the UN tower, in the Omega project.
 

This was different, though. I didn’t need to enter one of the pinpricks of light, as I had when I’d spoken to one person. I could shout to them all at once, and I knew they would hear, because the liquid streams of black connected me to them. It was all black except for their tiny lights and the blazing fire of my soul.

SPEAK, ELIJAH.
 

Don’s voice was gone. These words came to me from deeper than myself. Words of history before the creation of the world, revealed once, and now revealed again. They came out of my lips easily. They were what I was born to say, and every living soul was going to hear.

“
Behold
,” I began, “
the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.
”
In the ocean before my eyes, millions of pinpricks of light opened, like flowers opening for the sun. “
The day that is here shall set you ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave you neither root nor branch. But for you who fear the Lord’s name, the name of Jesus Christ, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts. Heed my words, for I am Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.
”

I finished, and all at once the universe was gone. I was back in the Dome. I’d been yanked out from under the bowl.
 

Don glared down at me. The hole in the center of his forehead was like a third eye, dripping blood. I felt nothing but contempt for him. My eyes looked past him, to Jacob’s body on the ground, to the gun just outside his outstretched arm, and then to the figures assaulting the dragon above.
 

The angels had joined the battle.

I recognized one of them—Michael. He raised his sword. It was not of the world. It was the same as the dragon’s flame, light against dark. They slammed into each other.
 

“Look at me,” Don demanded, and I did.

His face was astonished, terrified, and small. Yet his presence filled my precept again. He was holding back nothing. He couldn’t hurt me, I knew, no matter what he did. I had touched the Word, and the Word would conquer.

Don glared at me. “You chose wrong, prophet.”
 

His fist closed around my throat. He lifted me without effort, and my feet dangled above the ground. I didn’t fight back, didn’t struggle, didn’t speak. I didn’t have to. I had done my part.

With a sudden fling, Don hurled my body through the air, through the Dome’s giant doors, and into the open square. I crashed onto the ground and lost my breath. I clung to consciousness as my body rolled and finally slid to a stop.

My back was against the ground. I couldn’t feel anything below my waist. I tried to rise up, and fell. My right arm was broken. I twisted my head to the other side and saw paradise.
 

Naomi.

She was lying only feet away, as motionless as I was. It was like that moment in the ISA hallway almost a year ago, except now her ashen, freckled face was alive with energy. She smiled, as if I’d done the right thing.
 

“I heard you,” she said. “Elijah the prophet. You finished the race.”

I smiled back and tried to say something, anything. The effort nearly made me pass out. Nothing could move up my throat, where Don had crushed it in his grip. Each breath hurt, halting and irregular. So I just lay there, broken but staring into Naomi’s eyes, listening to the roar of battling angels and demons, light and dark.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you for this final moment.

Something beyond Naomi caught my attention.
 

The sun.
 

It was low in the sky, grazing the top edge of the wall around the square. The day’s light was fading, just as surely as my life was.
 

But the sun seemed to grow. I’d never seen it so big.
 

“I see them now, the angels,” Naomi whispered by my side. “Paul taught that it would end this way:
The Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire.
” She paused. “And Peter wrote,
The heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
”

I blinked my eyes shut, and when I opened them again, the sun was twice its size, maybe three times. It almost filled the sky. It was all I could see.

My face felt heat. More heat.

Hotter. Burning.

Then, all at once, as if bursting like a swollen red balloon, the sun exploded.

That’s how I got to this moment.