Infinite Testament (20 page)

Bruce painted a picture of a dark gang hell-bent on the
murder of innocent people. He left out some ‘minor’ details-like how the
world would likely end if he failed to destroy X. Elpis was simply too
much information. To try to explain who she was would be too
difficult. He had minimized her role in the story, despite the fact she
was probably the biggest factor in everything.

Bruce couldn’t read Kristen’s face. Did she believe
him or did she think he was crazy? “I’m sorry. You don’t have to
believe me. I should have told you all this before… but… I guess I was
scared.” Bruce gazed into Kristen’s eyes that glistened in the
moonlight.

A smile struggled across her face. “I believe
you. And I trust you.”

Bruce smiled widely. Kristen warmed his heart.
There was one left-out detail he felt compelled to explain. “There’s one
more thing.”

The next set of words that left his mouth was the hardest
he ever had to speak. “I was going to leave you for someone else.”
The statement shot like a missile straight to Kristen’s heart. She didn’t
respond. She just stared ahead. Her mind flooded with thoughts, too
many to comprehend.

All Bruce could do was continue. “Sara Ixley. I
loved her in high school. I loved her in college...” He
paused. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to destroy his
relationship with her. But he wanted to tell her the truth. He owed
her that much. “I never stopped loving her.”

Kristen shrunk in bed. Her shoulders drooped and her
eyes fell. She had always loved Bruce. Unconditionally. To
hear him say he had been unfaithful and that she wasn’t even his first choice
was excruciating. Her heart twisted as she considered the years she had
spent with him.

Bruce continued, “My heart always longed for Sara.
Even after I met you. Even after we’d been going out. When we met
up with her at the restaurant, it was my chance. I thought Sara and I
were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

“Then she died.

“After that, something happened. I realized the girl
I had already been with was an amazing, beautiful girl. She was
everything I ever wanted. It just took me a little longer to find out.

“We got married. We adopted a son.

“And I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

Kristen stared at Bruce. Those words, unlike the
missiles before, comforted her. She knew it was the truth. What
happened in the past had already happened. There was no changing
it. And there was no use hanging on to it.

She squeezed Bruce’s hand. “I don’t care what
happened with you and Sara.”

Bruce leaned over in the bed and softly kissed her.

Kristen whispered, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

She pointed at his heart. “For finally letting me in
here.”

Bruce laughed to himself. There she went again.
But he didn’t mind. Kristen was simply the best at corny lines. She
stared admirably into his eyes. A new side of him had been exposed to
her. She knew from here, their relationship would only grow.

“Don’t go,” Kristen said. “I don’t want to lose you,
Bruce.”

“You won’t.”

Bruce was convinced that was the truth. There was
simply no way he and Mikey would fail. They were too prepared. X
and the cult had no idea what was going to hit them. Bruce and Mikey
would kill them and there wouldn’t be so much as a whisper about it. The
world would continue to turn and life would go on.

But, if in the rare event Bruce failed, there was nothing
Kristen would be able to do. There was nothing anyone would be able to
do. Bruce trusted only one person to finish the job: Stephen Pandora.

Bruce said, “If anything should happen, I need you to do me
a favor.”

Kristen didn’t like his statement in the least. ‘If
anything should happen’ was a phrase she didn’t want to hear.
Nonetheless, she listened to the rest of what he had to say.

“I need you to give the ELPIS box to Stephen. You
can’t forget that.”

It was of monumental importance. Inside the box,
Bruce left explicit instructions on how to stop X. If Stephen didn’t lay
eyes on them, the world would be as good as gone.

Kristen nodded as her eyes filled up with tears. She
sat up in the bed and embraced Bruce. They hugged, never wanting to let
go.

They both knew tomorrow was the day.

It was two years earlier and it was the night Bruce would
daringly become a member of the cult.

It was late at night. Darkness covered the
city. Rain poured from the sky and thumped onto the hood of Bruce’s
sweater. He calmly crossed the street and headed for the Russell
Corporation tower. Grand Rapids was eerily quiet on this night.
There were no cars driving by, no people to be seen. There was just Bruce
walking with a cold determination to the Russell Corporation tower.

In front of him, through the downpour, he could see the entrance
to the building. A glass wall encompassed the entire side of the base of
the tower. A lone security guard sat at a circular security station in
the middle of the lobby. Behind him were the elevators.

Without missing a step, Bruce approached the clear
revolving door in the middle of the glass wall. And hurled a brick
through it. The revolving door shattered to pieces and the brick skidded
through the lobby. As expected, no alarm sounded. Instead, the
security guard, a muscularly bulging man in uniform, took off from his
desk. Bruce calmly, without breaking stride, walked through the entrance
he created for himself.

As the guard approached, Bruce dropped to his knees and put
his hands behind his head. In the corners of the ceiling, Bruce could see
the cameras fixated on him. This was it. He was officially
in. There was no turning back now. Complete the mission, and the
tapes would be destroyed and nary a peep would be uttered about his breakin.

The guard slammed Bruce’s face toward the ground, giving
him a close-up view of the marble floor. As the guard unclipped a pair of
handcuffs from his belt, a small amount of steam spit its way out of Bruce’s
sweater. Bruce took a deep breath.

“What is that?” the guard asked, demanding to know what was
fogging the air.

Bruce didn’t answer. He was too busy holding his
breath. The guard fumbled with the handcuffs, placing one of the cuffs on
Bruce’s left wrist. His hand was shaking. It was too much. He
managed to clip it closed. But after that, the guard flopped to the floor
next to Bruce.

Bruce leapt to his feet. Before leaving, he took the
guard’s weapon-a stun gun-from his holster. He walked toward the
elevator, leaving the guard on the floor. Bruce pushed the elevator
button. DING! An elevator door opened.

“Stop right there! Put your hands up!” Out of
the corner of his eye, Bruce saw another security guard. This guard was
pointing a stun gun at him. Bruce remained standing forward and didn’t
move.

“Did you hear what I said? Put your hands up!
Now!!”

Without looking, Bruce flicked his wrist and fired his stun
gun. The security guard convulsed and fell to the floor. Bull’s
eye. Bruce nonchalantly tossed the stun gun aside and boarded the
elevator. As the doors closed, he held down button number 3. The
elevator started to rise. While holding the number 3 button, he pushed
the buttons in sequence:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. The
elevator halted and jerked Bruce around. It started to descend.
Perfect. He did it.

Bruce was impressed with his relative
level of ease in breaking into the Russell Corporation tower. Now came
the hard part.

The elevator doors opened. Bruce
stepped out, only to find himself in some sort of storage basement. Boxes
were littered everywhere and the only light shed on the scene was from a lone
light bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Bruce squinted, looking past the
boxes for his next stop. He wandered around, flinging boxes aside.

Where to?

In a space only seven steps long, the
boxes were endless. They were stacked on top of each other and sprawled
on the floor. Bruce tossed them around. Box after box flung from
his hand as he tore through the room. This obstacle was unexpected.
Bruce stopped to examine the space. He must’ve missed something.
But then he noticed something out of place: a tall box that reached the
ceiling. All of the boxes had spread out and dissipated with the
exception of that one box. As Bruce neared it, he noticed it wasn’t a box
at all. He knocked on it and it rang out a metallic sound. How
clever. Hide a box-looking device in a room full of
actual
boxes. Bruce circled the metallic box until he found a crack in the
metal. A door. Bruce propped it open. Inside was a platform
with a lever protruding out of the gated floor.

Bruce stepped inside, pulled the door
closed, and yanked on the lever. The floor shook and descended. The
metal gate Bruce stood on was the only part of the ‘elevator’ that
lowered. Bruce looked up, observing the tunnel stretch as he traveled
further and further downwards. Minutes went by. He looked at the
cuffs unfortunately attached to his left wrist. Getting that off was
going to be a project. The platform abruptly stopped. In front of
him, a singular door slid open.

Bruce listened. Silence. He
popped his head out. No one. The room he had been delivered to was
closet-sized. At the end of it was a metal door with a circular
handle. Bruce gripped the handle with both of his hands and, as quietly
as he could, spun it around. Click. He pulled the door open as it
creaked ever so softly.

Bruce looked out. There was a long
circular
corridor that looked like a cramped sewer tunnel. The corridor was
desolate, with sparsely few light bulbs providing glimpses of light.
Bruce stepped out and strolled down. He could faintly hear the haunting
sound of chanting voices. Against the walls was the flickering of a
flashing fire. Straight ahead, at the end of the corridor, was an opening
where the fire was presumably coming from. It was some kind of large
room.

When
Bruce reached the open room, he
spotted the cult in the distance. In all, he counted 13 blue-robed
figures standing around a controlled, small circular fire. The scene was
exactly as he remembered in high school. Only now they had upgraded to a
much grander underground base.

Bruce emerged from the corridor and
marched toward the cult. Though he didn’t have a blue hood to cover his
head, the hood of his sweater produced the same effect. He yelled a Latin
phrase over the chanting, “
Adveniat regnum tuum
!”
The members of the cult stopped and looked at the intruder. Bruce
continued to shout. “
Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in
terra!” The cult grumbled amongst themselves.

X removed his hood. He was baffled. This
intruder knew their credo.

A member of the cult approached Bruce. “How did you
get here?”

Bruce grabbed the man’s hood and threw it backward,
revealing his face. The man in front of him was Chad Kane, his boss, the
principal, and Vince’s brother. Bruce was seldom surprised, but this had
him floored.
Chad
?

Bruce’s plan was ruined. He couldn’t kill Chad.

Instead he gave him a gift he knew would cause
trouble. A punch right in the jaw. Bruce followed through for all
the problems Chad had caused him before. The echo of the impact reached
the other cult members, who rushed to his aid. As Chad stumbled
backwards, Bruce shoved him to the ground before the other members could reach
him.

A pair of hands grabbed Bruce’s shoulders in an attempt to
take him down. Bruce whipped his head backwards and crashed into the face
of the assailant. Bruce flung around and clobbered him. The hood
flew off the man’s face as he staggered away.

Bruce felt a pounding on the back of his head.
Someone used their fist as a cannonball. But it wasn’t enough.
Bruce blindly turned and kicked his foot to tangle the balance of another
blue-robed figure and knocked him to the ground. He turned and connected
his fist to the stomach of another. He whipped around, swinging and
kicking at whoever wanted to get close enough to him.

Bruce discovered, rather fortunately, the benefits of
having handcuffs locked to one wrist. He whizzed the cuffs around,
striking the faces of the cult members.

X watched Bruce attack his 12 disciples with ease. It
was beautiful. Like ballet, his use of the handcuffs was a masterstroke
that was fluently followed by strikes with his free fist. But it could
only last so long.

Bruce was surrounded.

A fist finally evaded the impaling handcuff and connected
to Bruce’s eye, knocking his head backward. As he was hit, he stumbled
only slightly. But it was enough for another cult member to tackle him to
the ground. Bruce landed on his back with a thud. His hands and
feet were immediately grabbed and restrained by several cult members.
Bruce flailed and struggled but there was no point.

He lost his chance. He failed.

The cult members who held him down lifted him up and
allowed him to kneel.

That’s when Bruce saw the person he came to see: X.

His long, black curly hair flowed down freely to his
shoulders. When Bruce laid eyes on X’s face, he couldn’t believe who he
saw. The identity of X was a total surprise.

Stephen Pandora and Lisa Binsby were at a nice
restaurant celebrating their one-year anniversary.
They were
seniors in college on the cusp of graduation. All had been going well at
dinner. But something was unmistakably wrong.

Lisa pursed her lips. “I know you’re against leaving
Michigan when we graduate, but I think I’m going to go to Los Angeles for a
little while.” She continued to talk, but Stephen wasn’t paying attention
anymore. It was shocking; his heart folded. They had dated for a
year and she never mentioned moving to Los Angeles. Ever. At least
not that he could remember. He wondered why she would wait until a month
before graduation to tell him. His heart bounced around. There were
too many questions to ask.

“What? I don’t understand,” was all Stephen could
muster up.

Lisa furiously fought tears as she looked down. She
couldn’t bear the sight of Stephen’s broken heart. “I should’ve told you
sooner,” she mumbled to her lap.

Stephen forced a fake smile. “Lisa.”

She brought her eyes to his. He nodded and reassured,
“It’s okay.”

Lisa put her head in her hands and sobbed. It wasn’t
okay.

The rest of dinner didn’t exactly pick up. It was
somber, quiet, like a funeral. Stephen and Lisa fought a whirlwind of
emotions as they attempted to ignore the inflated elephant in the room.

Dinner was over. It was time to leave. As they
made their way out of the restaurant, they clenched hands. Things were
different now; they might never be the same. And the worst part was they
both knew it.

Lisa was overwhelmed. “Stephen, I need to use the
bathroom before we leave.”

“I’ll wait out here for you.”

Lisa went into the bathroom. Stephen stood
alone. The restaurant was sparsely lit but Stephen felt the heat of a
spotlight shining on him. He was naked. All alone for the world to
see.

Stephen glanced around for a spot to sit. There was
no telling how long Lisa would be. Behind him was a leather couch with
someone sitting on the right half. Stephen approached the couch. He
was going to sit next to the stranger whether he liked it or not. The
stranger was a man his age, maybe a year or two older, with dark, short
hair. Somehow, oddly, he looked familiar. Stephen had seen him
somewhere before, but he couldn’t place it. Stephen flopped himself onto
the leather. The stranger asked, “Your girl had to use the bathroom too,
huh?”

“Yeah,” Stephen replied.

“We could be waiting a while.”

Stephen forced a laugh. He was too distraught to joke
around. The stranger sensed something was wrong. “You okay buddy?”

“Yeah… everything’s fine.”

The stranger wrapped an arm around Stephen’s
shoulder. “Come on, you can tell me. Listen…” he leaned in to
Stephen, “I just asked my girlfriend to marry me. You know what she
said?”

Stephen glanced at him. He didn’t care. “What
did she say?”

“She said she didn’t know. That she had a lot on her
mind. Then she started crying and needed to use the bathroom. So
whatever is happening to you… it’s probably not as bad as what’s happening to
me.” The stranger chuckled, “Who knows, they’re probably having a great
time in there right now.”

Stephen relented. “She told me she’s moving to Los
Angeles.”

The stranger shook his head. “Is that what you’re
upset about?”

Stephen shrugged.

The stranger chuckled. “Do you love her?”

Stephen nodded. Of course he did. “Yeah.”

“Then go with her... Take her to a special
place. Tell her you love her. Ask her to marry you…

“…And go with her.”

The stranger’s solution was so simple. Why hadn’t he
thought of it? Of course he would do that. There was nothing in
Michigan for him anyway. He would go with her to Los Angeles.
Simple. The grief inside of Stephen dissipated. He felt
relieved. Stephen turned to the friendly stranger with a smile.
“Thanks.”

“No problem, hope things work out.” The stranger
squinted his eyes and tilted his head at Stephen. He had the look of a
man in deep thought. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Stephen
replied. “My name’s Stephen. Stephen Pandora.”

The stranger laughed. “That’s how! We went to
grade school together. Actually, I should apologize. I was probably
a pain in the ass to you for quite a while.” The stranger held out his
hand. Just then, Stephen remembered the face he couldn’t place. The
stranger was someone he had seen many times before. He tried to beat him
up in grade school and fought Bruce in high school. Funny… this stranger
had always been trouble for Stephen and Bruce.