Anna raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“He says he hears the Voice when he sleeps,” I said. “Askala.”
Anna’s face blanched, but I didn’t have the chance to say anything more. Elias rose, and instantly, all eyes in the room turned on him.
“As you can see, the Outsiders have come. It is time for the Ascension.”
As Elias spoke, all voices stilled.
“As I foretold, five Outsiders would come into Bunker 84, ushering the beginning of the Ascension. On that day we would feast and Aeneas would fly out of the Earth.”
Elias paused, collecting his thoughts. He closed his eyes.
“There shall be Five,” he intoned. “The pilot. The scientist. The soldier. The slave.” Elias opened his eyes, and stared directly at me. “And the one who is marked of darkness.”
I tried hard not to react. He didn’t know which of us was which — at least, not yet. And we sure as hell weren’t going to tell him. His entire prophecy was shot to the ground because there were, in fact, six of us, including Grudge.
“Where are you planning on flying Aeneas?” Ashton asked.
“There is so much to do,” Elias said. “But I suppose we can begin by making our attack on Los Angeles.”
I stood up in my seat. Immediately, two pairs of hands latched onto me from behind. They forced me down into my chair.
“Los Angeles?” I asked. “You are attacking Los Angeles?”
Elias shrugged. “Of course. I never did tell you what Bunker 84 was built to house, did I?”
Elias’s smile widened as I felt my heart pound. Anna grabbed me by the arm, pulling me back in my seat.
“Stay cool,” she said. “We don’t know enough yet to be going crazy.”
Unlike these people, I wanted to add, but I said nothing.
“There was a reason why Bunker 84 was kept more secure than most other Bunkers,” Elias said. “Including, to an extent, Bunker One. It’s because Bunker 84 was the site chosen for the storage of nuclear weapons.”
I tried not to let my shock show, but it was hard. I had definitely not been expecting that. A madman, with access to nukes. Then, another connection clicked in my head. If Elias was truly controlled by Askala, then I could see why she would have wanted him. If she controlled this Bunker, then she could control nukes. Could she even think that far ahead? Even to an advanced alien race, nukes would present a great deal of power. And if she could wipe out most of humanity using Elias in the process, all the better.
“You have nukes here?” Michael asked.
Elias continued to smile, clearly pleased. “Oh, yes. We have some of the most powerful toys the U.S. Government ever created.” Elias shrugged. “Some two hundred of them, in fact.”
Two hundred nuclear weapons. Of all of the things the United States decided to save during the Dark Decade, why had they decided to save those?
Los Angeles. Nuclear weapons. And the five of us, held prisoner, were the only ones who had a chance to stop it.
“You can’t do this,” I said. “There are thousands of people living in Los Angeles. If you take out Los Angeles…”
We were going to lose the vast majority of people still alive in the Wasteland. Sure, Carin Black would probably die in the attack. At the same time, however, so would everyone else. With two hundred nukes, Elias could do a lot of damage.
But one question remained unanswered — why had he kept us alive to bear witness? And why was he deciding to go now? Clearly, he still needed us for something, and he believed in his prophecy about the Five. If all of this Askala stuff was true, then she wanted us alive for something.
For what?
“Humanity is polluted with darkness,” Elias said. “We must cleanse the world of its filth. We will begin with Los Angeles, but we won’t stop there. There is the rest of the world, too — and with the Aeneas, we can make sure most of the cancer is obliterated.”
“No!” Anna shouted, standing.
The woman guarding Anna knocked her in the head with the butt of her gun, causing Anna’s head to drop to the table. With a roar, I stood and began to wrestle the gun from her.
“Stop!” Elias shouted.
Several more women grasped my arms, forcing me back to my seat. Though Anna was knocked out cold, there was no bleeding.
She stirred, opening one eye. I put my hand on her face.
“Anna…you there?”
Slowly, she lifted her head from the table. “Yeah…I think so.”
Elias smiled, and looked like he was ready to speak again.
Except that was when all of the lights went out.
Chapter 15
Everything was cloaked with darkness. Elias cursed above the din and began to shout orders.
“Secure the ship! Don’t let them escape!”
Several pairs of hands grasped me in the dark. Judging by the cries alongside me, Anna and the others were also being restrained. It was hard to tell anything that was going on.
I twisted myself, breaking free of the hands gripping me, scattering dishes and food in the process. I turned to face my attackers, grabbing a nearby metal plate. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. I stepped forward, swinging my plate. It whistled through the empty air.
Another pair of hands latched onto me from the side. Amid the screams filling the anteroom, I felt cold metal at my throat.
A blade.
At that moment, my assailant screamed, high and shrill. Her grip loosened as I felt her slide to the floor. I hopped away, and the blade the woman had held clattered to the deck.
“Got your back.”
“Anna!”
Then she was in front of me, scooping up the blade from the deck. There was just light enough to make out her form. From all around came sounds of panic. It wouldn’t be long until we were attacked again.
“Come on,” Anna said, pressing the hilt of the knife into my hand. “Michael and the others went aft.”
As I gripped the knife, she pulled me forward, out of the anteroom and into one of the corridors leading aft. The shouts and screams in the anteroom dimmed when we broke into a jog.
“Where are we going?”
Anna didn’t answer. She slowed to a walk in the light from the end of the corridor. The silhouettes of two men blocked the doorway.
At Anna’s approach, two guns were raised and pointed in our direction.
“Michael, it’s us,” Anna said.
I had no idea what the hell was going on. It was as if this whole thing were planned.
“That him?”
It was Grudge. I’d never been happier to hear his voice in my life.
“Get in here,” Julian said. “We have control of the fusion drive.”
The fusion drive. That was how they were able to cut off power. I hadn’t given Grudge enough credit. The fact that he had risked his life to help us after my lack of faith was humbling.
Anna and I entered the power room, which was bathed in a pale blue light. The room itself was rather small — the six of us crowded inside had filled it to almost overflowing. Pipes and machinery covered every surface, most of which fed into the large spherical tank set into the room’s very back. This was the fusion drive. It was about fifteen feet high, if I had to guess, and about as wide, made completely of metal. A touchscreen glowed blue in front of it. Ashton fiddled with the computer.
“Wait for it…” he said.
“Try to hurry it up,” Grudge said. “We don’t have long.”
Grudge turned to me, plucking a handgun from his side. With a flourish, he spun it around his finger and handed it to me.
“Believe this is yours.”