Arkadium Rising by Glen Krisch Read Free Book Online Page B

just... gone."
    Marcus sat close to him, looking out as the water pushed by, debris flailing in the violent current.
    "And pretty much without a hitch, thank you very much. All except for your meddling."
    "All of that water... the Black Hawk never held so much water."
    "It did before man's interference. Dams upon dams for hundreds of miles have enslaved these waters, and we freed them one after another."
    "You won't get away with this."
    "Oh, but we already have. This little flood is small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. There are a thousand bigger events happening at this very moment around the world, all carried out by a thousand branches of the Arkadium; fires engulfing whole cities, explosions ripping apart transportation networks, floods like our very own washing away the filth of humanity. Every one of them synchronized to simultaneously destroy modern man's stranglehold on nature."
    Marcus had gone mad; Jason could see it in his eyes. Once and for all his brother had fully committed to his madness, throwing away all pretense of dabbling at his destiny. There was no way Jason could believe otherwise, no way he could possibly wrap his mind around what Marcus insisted about the fate of the rest of the world.
    "You're crazy, Marcus. You know that, don't you?" He wanted to shake him, shake him until the fillings dislodged from his teeth. Jason's fists tighten at his sides.
    "Remember when we were kids..." Marcus said as he checked to make sure his cell phone still worked. His eyes gleamed with happiness as he turned his gaze to the water. "The best day of the year wasn't Christmas, but the 4th of July. There was always a noontime picnic, then baseball until it was too dark to see, and chasing lightning bugs all over the neighborhood, property boundaries meaningless. And when it was full-on dark, the sky blazing with a trillion stars in all colors of the rainbow."
    "Jesus... how did those people ever follow someone like you?"
    "I'm a great leader. It's true. Adam, the leader of the Arkadium, glimpsed my talent, got me clean, helped me find the right path."
    "You, a leader? More like a mass-murderer." Jason thought about the people he'd left behind downstairs. With dozens of homes in Concord, there could be hundreds of people bound, dead and dying just within the surrounding blocks.
    "Look around, brother. This is my doing," Marcus said and checked his cell phone again. "One minute."
    "One minute until what?"
    Marcus said nothing, but he stood and braced himself against the canting of the roof, raising his hands high above his head as if awaiting the clouds to fall on him like cotton candy.
    "What are you doing?"
    "Look! What perfect timing." Marcus pointed toward the horizon. A passenger jet arced into view, trailing a white vapor trail across a perfect patch of blue. "I bet that's a flight heading for Chicago."
    Jason stood, his legs shaking.
    "Just watch. Bear witness with me. It's just like the best day of the year, but better. It's the best day ever. The best day of all humankind."
    Jason looked to where Marcus stared at the sky. The dusk of early evening seemed to tremble as if in direct reaction to their attention. Yellow-gray waves coursed across the horizon like ripples in water. One wave crashed into another, taking it into its fold, growing larger, impacting more and more of the sky.
    "Always remember, brother, I love you."
    A piercing whiteness suddenly exploded in the sky, sending deltas of lightning cascading down as far as the eye could see. The white ball bloomed wider, its brightness no longer blinding, but still an enormous bright globe, a second moon, a satellite of white-hot flame.
    Thunder rained down on them in the lightning's wake. It pummeled Jason, jarring the air from his lungs and popping his eardrums. He fell to his stomach and covered his ears, screaming against the calamity. He screamed himself hoarse, but the noise was so profound he couldn't hear his own voice.
    After a minute, or maybe