The Tears of Nero (The Halo Group Book 1) by Jason Brannon Read Free Book Online Page A

and for some reason, he was reminded of the circus.  It was a stench of wet hay, offal, musk and raw meat.  It was the primal smell of a fresh carcass that made Henry imagine the buzzing of flies even though there weren’t any down here.
    He clutched the picture of Margaret, the reason why he was here.  Thinking of her face again was enough to bring tears to his eyes.  Oh, how he had loved her!  He missed her so much, and there wasn’t a single day that he didn’t wish he could see her one last time.
    What did any of this have to do with her?
    The question went unanswered as the room was illuminated by an explosion of white light.  Henry squinted and shielded his eyes against the glare.  After he had a few seconds to adjust to the abrupt shift from darkness to light, he saw that he wasn’t alone.  Others were seated around the room.  The strained look of panic on each face suggested they were just as confused about all of this as he was.  Further inspection revealed they weren’t in a room at all, but in a hollowed out bowl of a place that functioned like a small earthen atrium.
    In the center of the atrium were four others like Seneca, wearing similar masks drawn to reflect varying degrees of sadness.  Their robes, however, differed greatly from the one Seneca wore.  One wore crimson.  Another white.  One wore a sickly yellow garment.  The other black.
    In the back of Henry’s mind there was some significance to the color scheme of the robes, but he couldn’t concentrate long enough to make the connection.  From some dark place came the strained sounds of a violin playing a mournful tune, and the masked figures took their cue, moving to the four corners of the room, effectively forming a square.
    The violin abruptly stopped, and someone spoke to them from a dark balcony.  “Why do bad things happen to good people?  That is the question we’ve come here to answer.  You’ve all experienced tragedy.  You’ve all experienced loss.  The question is why?  You are all strangers to each other, but friends among the members of my group.  We are a brotherhood dedicated to uncovering truth.  We look in the dark places, beneath rocks, in the shadows, in the bleakest spaces of the soul.  We search for our answers in the places where no one else dares to look.”
    “We know that bad things happen to good people because God allows it.  The Book of Job attests to this.  The question, once again, is why?  Surely God could stop all of the tragedy and heartache.  Of course we have to take this one step further.  There are good people who are faithful to God and believe in Him.  There are also good people who don’t believe.  We could rationalize that God might allow bad things to happen to those good, nonbelieving people simply because of their absence of faith.  But what about the faithful?  What about those like Job who have done nothing but what God asked of them?  This audience is comprised of both groups, and yet everyone in here has suffered equally.  Tonight we are going to experiment in hopes of understanding.  Tonight we are going to watch and see what God will do.”
    “This experiment will determine the fate of millions.  The horsemen of Armageddon are waiting to be released, and the outcome of tonight’s demonstration will decide whether or not they are loosed to freely roam the earth, spreading destruction in their wake.  We will leave the decision in God‘s hands.  Life will mean life for everyone.  Death…well, I think that speaks for itself.”    
    Something clicked in Henry’s head.  The horsemen.  That’s what the different colors were supposed to represent.  The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were most commonly known as War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.  The red was obviously War.  Famine was yellow.  Pestilence, white.  Black, of course, was death. 
    But what was all this about freeing The Four Horsemen?  Henry didn’t understand.  He was