Brian Steele - 4POCALYPSE - Four Tales of a Dark Future

Sienna shuffled over. “What was, uh… what is your name? You never told me.”

Eyes a thousand years deep took her in. “Kayleigh. Kayleigh Lopez.”

“I’m so, so sorry Kayleigh.”

“I’m not,” she replied with a wry smile.

“Kayleigh, do you… do you know what I’ll become?”

“No, not even I can predict such an outcome. But I know what you are, Sienna.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Hope.”

DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 12-07-24

“Nothing, sir!”

“Damn it. You three secure this room and the rest of you follow me down to where Lopez is kept.”

She heard them, felt them.

She knew how their atomic structures differed from the walls, the floors, the guns they held, the air around them. Every particle of energy, the quantum mechanics of being, she intuitively understood the diversity. Faster than reading it, because it was faster than thought, more like a newly acquired involuntary system in the body that you remained acutely aware of.

The doors burst open, and she knew two guards had swept in, their weapons raised at her as she lay over the corpse of Kayleigh Lopez. She didn’t have to look, she knew, she felt. She felt Rove enter the room as well.

“Get her away from it.”

It. Not Kayleigh, not even “Lopez.” It.

Sienna felt rage.

She turned on the first guard who was coming up to grab her arm. A single hand out, palm up. It connected with his chest, hard. More than that, it connected with his being. This was not the catastrophic entropy of a Feeder. This was not the energy manipulation of a Mancer. This was the something else. This was the guard’s electrons scattering wildly, his protons and neutrons losing their cohesion, and his existence wiped out on a sub-atomic level. It was the super-fusion of a dying star at her fingertips. The guard was erased in light.

The other guard ran screaming.

Rove faced her in contempt. “I’ll make sure to execute that man and his family later. But for now, I see you fancy yourself some kind of Mancer. I don’t know what insipid trick you just pulled, but it won’t work with me.”

“One problem,” said Sienna quietly as she dried her tears. “I’m not a Mancer.”

The entire room exploded outward in a perfect halo of brick and steel.

She felt them running, heard them barking orders over their earpieces through the T-Net. She dismissed that entire portion of data, silencing communications via Servants throughout Raleigh. Stepping over the rubble, there came a groan, and Rove stumbled to his feet. She felt the Feeders being herded into an offensive position, felt another Mancer who she took to be the Madam President moving down to take control of them. Good.

“Insolent bitch!” roared Rove. “You’ll beg me to end your life once I’ve beaten respect into you.”

“No,” said Sienna with a sigh. “You won’t.”

Rove bellowed and hurled some type of energy at her. Nothing happened. It, like anything else he could bring to bear on her, simply dispersed before her. Sienna glowed, like her aura itself had become infused with energy. In a way, for moments, it had — whatever Rove had tried to attack her with had been taken apart and redistributed throughout eternity.

“What are you?” Rove demanded of her, his jowls trembling with indignation.

Sienna snorted, and looked to the sky.

“Hope?” she replied before annihilating his existence and flinging it out through the Milky Way.

DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Kepler-Madison, Margaret. / 12-07-24

/DataLog Text-SUPPLEMENTAL: Doyle, Sienna A.

The Madam President Margaret Kepler-Madison brought the procession to a halt. Head held high with four of her Honor Guards to each side and five hundred Feeders at her back, she found a single young woman standing in the streets before her. Short blonde hair and curvy with her hands stuffed into the pockets of stained navy cargo pants and a badly torn flannel work shirt exposing far too much. Yes, thought the Madam President, I can see why that weakling doctor was smitten with this.

“Child, you can not conceive the deserved punishment you’re about to endure.”

“Child?” repeated the young woman. “Cute. If that makes you feel better, sure. I take it you’re the crazy bitch calling herself the President?”

The Madam President was aghast. No one of such ill breeding and low-standards had ever spoken to her in that manner. Her very being commanded respect. Fealty! She deserved to be acknowledged and treated as a superior!

“What, are you not sure? Because I don’t see any other bitter old cunts marching down the street with her pet Feeders.”

“Kill it for me!” screeched the President. “Kill it in my name!”

Bullets flew from guns, none of them ever reaching her. Each one dissolved into a star before her presence, each one drifting away. The young woman hadn’t even shifted her stance.

“I’ll take out your guards if I have to, but why don’t you try those Feeders you so desperately rely on.”

Margaret Kepler-Madison seethed. The impudence displayed by this… this lesser was not to tolerated. Reaching back with her Mancer abilities, she sought that spark in each Feeder she could clasp onto and control.

Nothing. Emptiness.

The Madam President spun in time to see all five hundred of her Feeder fall, each one inert and radiating energies from the orifices that once absorbed it. In unison, they burnt out, burst, and settled as piles of ash. Trying to face the young woman again, she had to shield her eyes. The searing light emanating from her was like that of a sun.

“No…” the President moaned.

“No? No what?” asked the young woman, this filthy lower creature, as she closed the distance between them. “No, I can’t order a peaceful community to be slaughtered just to kidnap one person who doesn’t even know I exist? No, I probably shouldn’t have a child butchered just because she might pose a threat to my regime some day? No what?”

“Leave The Madam be!” howled Ashmore as he charged out of nowhere.

Margaret Kepler-Madison could have sworn the young woman’s eyes themselves exuded lightning as Ashmore exploded into nothingness.

“A supernova is just as devastating as a black hole,” murmured The Madam President.

“What?”

“Dr. Harvey’s last words. I… see now.”

This terrible celestial thing in the shape of a dirty young woman, it stood above and looked down upon her as if contemplating judgment. This little wretch, a disguise for a condensed composition of stars, had a scowl sculpted from infinity. The ruling came far, far too soon.

“No, you don’t see,” said the light as she took Margaret Kepler-Madison face in her hands. “And you never will again.”

DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 12-07-24

Sienna felt weariness, deep down in her soul. Too much death. Too much suffering. She lay back on the stone bench and tried to ignore the presences she felt creeping closer. Either guards or citizens. Closing her eyes, she shifted the Servant she had taken from the Madam President. While Sienna didn’t really care at the moment, Madam President wasn’t going to need it ever again. Its familiar weight felt comfortable, familiar, in her hand. Too bad about that.

There was an explosion nearby, followed by another only seconds later. Great, she was a revolutionary. Could she please go to sleep here, as thanks for liberating everyone? Awesome.

Nope. She felt a single individual strolling towards her. Openly, casually.