Apokalypsis, p.2
Apokalypsis, page 2
Axel reaches the dam, gets a new ship, and goes looking for Alice. He finds her on Planet C, still alive, but barely, and hurries back to help the others.
Bruce and Tom stage a successful rescue and flee the ruins, badly wounding the Jakar’s leader in the process by severing his arm with a plasma sword. At least a hundred other people are still captured by the Jakar, who are now giving chase to re-capture the ones that escaped.
The general takes off in the rocket ship, taking the water samples with him. Axel returns with Alice just in time to rescue Layla, Bruce, and the others who are running from the Jakar. They follow the rocket ship up to orbit, and both Preston and Axel try to warn them against leaving. The general doesn’t listen, and the ship is destroyed by drone interceptors. They return to the dam to figure out what’s next. Axel has a surprise for Alice when she arrives: he was able to get the Architects to bring her husband and son to Planet B as well. She’s happy, but also angry that Axel brought them here to such a dangerous place.
Indignant that not even a good deed is being appreciated, Axel dismisses himself saying he has minder business to attend. Tom and Bruce discreetly follow him, using their cloaking armor to stay hidden. Axel goes down to the locked door on the “gateway” level. He opens the door, which he previously stated could not be opened, and walks into a transporter room. It takes him, Bruce, and Tom back to Earth, to a luxurious penthouse apartment in New York. There Axel has a conversation with a man and a woman, Adama and Chava. Bruce notes how similar Adama’s name sounds to that of the Jakar’s god, Agama. Axel speaks with these two strangers about having rescued Axel’s friends, and who else they are going to save before the Architects arrive.
Bruce and Tom accidentally reveal themselves, and Adama and Chava neutralize them with some type of advanced weapon. They wake up back inside the hangar of the dam, with no memories of the encounter. The others find them there, but they are interrupted by the sound of an explosion from one of the higher levels. They go to investigate and encounter a team of Russian soldiers who just landed. The Russians are openly hostile and interrogate them. Preston explains about the dinosaurs, and the Russians immediately leave to see it for themselves. Preston is experiencing déjà vu, remembering that this is how he and his team got into trouble. He warns the others this isn’t going to end well.
Synopsis of Worlds Collide (Book 2)
WARNING the following synopsis contains spoilers from Worlds Collide (Architects of the Apocalypse, Book 2). If you would prefer to read that book first, you can get it on Amazon here: https://geni.us/worldscollide
Synopsis of Worlds Collide
September 29, 2069 (Planet B)
March 27, 2070 (Earth)
Axel returns from his trip to New York where he spoke with Adama and Chava. He uses his suit’s cloaking shield to get the upper hand over the Russian soldiers guarding the others, but the rest of the Russian expedition returns from exploring and everyone is forced to flee the facility in Axel’s ship. They land by the river to re-group and make a plan to take back the dam.
Axel finally confesses that he did bring them all to Planet B, but that he wasn’t acting alone. The original minders of Planet B helped to abduct them. Axel insists that he took them for a good reason, because soon Earth will be invaded by an oppressive alien race. Axel is forced to admit that there actually is a way to get them home. He tells them about the wormhole on the gateway level of the dam. They make a plan to infiltrate the facility and activate the gateway to go home.
Soon after Axel finishes his explanations, Fango Morales betrays them, running back to the dam to share the secrets of the facility with the Russians in exchange for asylum. Axel and Layla run after him, but they lose track of Fango in the jungle. Axel realizes that he has also lost Layla. He returns to the ship alone, with everyone demanding to know where Layla is. He says that she just vanished, but they are more suspicious of him than ever.
Layla wakes up in her bed, back in her apartment in Brooklyn. Upon waking, she realizes that the apartment has been rented out to someone else in her absence. Layla knows she can’t just go back to her old life; the government will want to question her after her mysterious disappearance, especially after what they learned from Preston Baylor’s mission to Planet B, so she flees the building and calls her mother to come and pick her up—but not before the robot doorman gets a look at her face and makes a positive ID.
Meanwhile, the USA is planning to send another mission to Planet B, this time a whole company of Army Rangers. Retired Army Major, Ethan White, is reinstated to lead the mission due to a curious story from his past which reveals that he was likely abducted and taken to Planet B as a kid, only to be mysteriously returned after more than two years had passed on Earth. Ethan is tasked with establishing a forward operating base, rescuing the missing people from Earth, and finding out more about the so-called living water on Planet B.
When the mission is just about to leave, they are ordered to postpone the launch: Layla Bester was just seen leaving her apartment building. Her knowledge of Planet B could be vital to the success of Operation Deliverance.
Meanwhile, back on Planet B Axel and the others infiltrate the dam with the aid of cloaking “mech suits” to hide them from enemy sight and sensors. Bruce is determined to use the gateway to go home, but Axel reveals that it needs to recharge; it was activated too recently to be used again now. They settle for removing a key component so that the Russians can’t activate it. They agree to sneak back in once the gateway has finished recharging.
Just before they can leave, Fango Morales appears, also wearing a mech suit, and using its sensors to see them through their cloaking shields. A firefight ensues and once again they are forced to flee the facility. They know that sneaking back in won’t be so easy next time. Fango will show the Russians how to use the mech suits, and the cloaking shields won’t be enough to hide them.
Back at the ship, they take off and find a place to re-group. Everyone is angry and blaming Axel for the situation. They want to contact Earth. Axel says that his ship can’t communicate with Earth tech. Preston insists that he can find a way. They ultimately send a message in Morse code.
On Earth, Major White’s mission is back on schedule. Layla Bester sent the intel they needed in a message, along with Axel’s warning that the Architects are coming to Earth, but her whereabouts remains unknown.
Layla is hiding in a cabin in rural Maine that belongs to her brother-in-law. She has spent the last few weeks in isolation, trying to decide what to do next. She realizes that someone is following her, and she has been seeing a shadowy silhouette visit her at night. Now she has also discovered that she is pregnant, but that should be impossible; she hasn’t been with anyone in a long time. She suspects Axel might be responsible. She is furious and her skin is crawling with the possibilities. Who is the shadowy figure that she has seen skulking in her room at night, and who is the bearded man that has been following her on her supply runs to town? Did Axel bring her back to Earth, or was it someone else? And why impregnate her? Nothing is making any sense, but she is determined to end the pregnancy before it gets any further along.
Back on Planet B, Bruce and Preston get an almost immediate reply to their message, but it’s not from Earth: it’s from Ethan White of Operation Deliverance. They’re inbound to Planet B and due to the extreme time dilation between them and Earth, it will only be eight local hours before the mission makes landfall. Ethan sets a rendezvous at the ruins of the city where Preston’s mission landed. They plan to establish a forward base at the same location.
Bruce is worried that will be too close to the Russians and that they may have brought surface-to-air missiles which could intercept and destroy the landers. He wants to warn them off, but Axel says that sending another message is too risky. They’ve already broken the Architects’ rules which prohibit two-way contact between Earth and Planet B. Doing so again could lead to serious consequences.
The others insist on sending the message anyway. No sooner than the message is sent, the ship and all of their alien equipment is mysteriously disabled. Axel says he told them this would happen. They set out from the ship on foot, armed with nothing but a few stolen Russian rifles. They’re planning to reach the ruins before Operation Deliverance arrives in the hopes that Major White will land there despite their warning, or that he will send a search party to look for them.
Soon after leaving the ship, dinosaurs and primitive humans attack them. They defend themselves as best they can, but become separated in their hurry to escape. Neil and Jess wind up on their own. They emerge in a clearing to see an alien ship landed there and two strange mechanized creatures with four legs beneath bulbous, glowing blue control pods. They realize that there are biological aliens floating inside of those spherical pods. The aliens see them and open fire. Neil is vitrified by a bolt of plasma. Jess flees for her life only to meet the same horrifying end. The others search for them in vain, eventually giving up in the hopes that Neil and Jess will make their own way to the ruins.
Back on Earth, Layla gets a medication to terminate her pregnancy. She takes it and goes to bed, but the shadowy figure visits her again, and she swears that this time it injected her with something. As time goes by Layla realizes that she is still pregnant. Whatever she was injected with, it prevented the pills from terminating her pregnancy. What’s more, somehow the fetus is growing almost twice as fast as it should. She wonders if she should try again, or keep the baby. That night the shadowy figure haunting her provides the answer: her daughter is important. Layla is stunned. It should be impossible to know the sex of the fetus at such an early stage—unless the gender was determined prior to implantation. She realizes that this wasn’t Axel’s doing, or if it was, then he wasn’t acting alone. She must have been impregnated clinically, but who did it, why, and why to her?
On Planet B, Bruce, Tom, Preston, Axel, and Alice and her family arrive at the ruins. They see no sign of Ethan White or his company of Rangers, but it’s still too early for them to have arrived, so they take shelter in one of the buildings and rest for the night. Before long they are awakened by the sound of something breaking in. It’s a contingent of native Jakar warriors with a pack of trained raptors. They are captured by the Jakar and taken away in wagons drawn by triceratops.
Major White and Operation Deliverance touch down at the new landing site. The sound and commotion of the landers spooks a herd of brontosauruses and they knock one of the landers over just as it’s setting down. The rocket explodes and a third of their company is killed. It’s a grim beginning to the mission.
Ethan and his soldiers begin setting up the FOB and picking through the rubble of the ruined lander. They see no sign of Preston Baylor or the others who were with him, which confirms to Ethan that they didn’t get his message with the new coordinates for their rendezvous. He begins planning a mission with one of the rovers to reach the ruins, where he suspects they will have gone. His second-in-command, Lieutenant Amber Cox, advises him against sending only one of their remaining two rovers, saying he should wait until they can spare both, but he insists on going anyway, saying that time is of the essence and lives are at stake. Ethan reaches the ruins to find that Preston and the others aren’t there, but he does find fresh wagon tracks. He follows them up into the mountains.
Preston, Axel, Bruce, and the others arrive at their destination. The Jakar have brought them to a settlement in a canyon where they will work as slave laborers. The mouth of the canyon is walled, and the walls are being rebuilt after a recent battle with an unknown enemy. They are told by the Jakar that they will be quarrying stone blocks with which to repair the walls. They spend the night in caves above the settlement and discover that the Russians from the dam are also here, along with the traitor, Fango Morales. Apparently, the Jakar took over the facility as well. The next day everyone is led down into the valley to work. Alice goes with her son and the elderly slaves to help cook their meals, while the others are sent to the quarry.
Ethan White arrives above the cliffs overlooking the valley and begins surveillance. He realizes that Preston and the others are in the valley and calls back to the FOB for the second rover to reinforce his position.
Meanwhile, Bruce and the other captives witness a ceremony in which a procession of women with a small Jakar baby cross the river to a strange alien structure. A mechanized alien emerges. It has a spherical pod sitting atop four segmented black legs. The Jakar woman at the front of the group lays her baby in front of it, and it does something to the child, but doesn’t appear to hurt it. The women retreat, and the alien driving the vehicle slips out into the water. Bruce and the others get a brief glimpse of something with a big sleek black body, flat like a manta ray, with tentacles trailing all around the edges. They’re not sure what to make of this, and they ask Axel if that is one of the elusive Architects who supposedly engineered the Menagerie System with its 120 hollow planets. He says that the Jakar call them Sacred Warriors, but he claims to have no idea if they are the Architects.
Back on Earth, Layla has had enough of her isolation in Maine, and she returns to her mother’s home on Long Island. She reveals her pregnancy and the implication that she is being experimented upon, possibly by the same shadowy figure who has been haunting her at night.
Layla’s mother, Abigail, reveals that she was also visited by such a specter when she was pregnant with Layla, but she doesn’t believe it’s an alien or some other malign entity. She expresses her theory that the shadow man could be Layla’s late father, visiting her from the other side. Abigail thinks the shadow that visited her was Layla’s grandfather, who had passed away not long before Layla was conceived. Layla is skeptical of these supernatural explanations and unnerved by her mother’s reaction to the news of her pregnancy. She’s acting like it’s a good thing.
Soon after this, the invasion that Axel warned about arrives. The media is calling them the Watchers. At first, no shots are fired. Big, black alien ships cruise low over cities all around the Earth.
A small emissary vessel lands in central park, and a four-legged machine with a glowing blue control pod emerges. A crowd gathers, and news drones are hovering about transmitting the spectacle to all corners of the globe.
The alien begins speaking in stilted English, identifying itself as one of the Watchers, saying that they are also known as the Architects.
The alien begins issuing ultimatums, ordering all people everywhere to lay down their weapons or suffer the consequences. The emissary claims that the Architects have come to save them from themselves and to reverse the damage that has been done to Earth before it is too late. It says that everyone on Earth will be made immortal and in this way they will live long enough to share in the fate of their planet. In addition, everyone will be forcibly sterilized until they have earned the right to procreate.
At this, the crowd grows restless. A teenager throws a glass bottle at the alien. It shatters harmlessly on the bulbous cockpit. The alien retaliates by killing the kid. The crowd panics, scattering, but the alien continues blithely delivering its speech, saying that the Architects will take over and unify every government on Earth, re-writing their laws in accordance with their benevolent plan to save the Earth. Law-breakers will be punished by execution or exile to Planet B.
Having delivered these ultimatums, the alien retreats back into its ship and takes off. Layla and her mother are horrified by these developments.
Back on Planet B Axel reveals that the alien facility in the river from which the mechanized alien emerged contains another gateway like the one at the dam. He says he thinks he can configure it to take them back to Earth. Armed with this knowledge, Bruce begins hatching an escape plan. He realizes that they outnumber the Jakar guards, who are only armed with spears and bows. If they were to overwhelm a few of the guards and then make a run for the gateway, they might be able to escape before the Jakar can stop them. Bruce gets Preston and Tom to share the plan with the Russians and some of the other English-speaking captives who are the surviving abductees from New York. While they are still relating their escape plans, an elderly Jakar man who speaks some English betrays them to the guards. Tom and Preston are punished by tying them to tall wooden posts for pterodactyls to feed upon.
Still watching the valley from above, Major White now has both rovers and seven rangers with him. At Lieutenant Cox’s insistence, he is waiting for two platoons of reinforcements to arrive on foot, but when he sees Preston and Tom, he realizes that they are out of time. He and several snipers up on the cliffs pick off the pterosaurs that are attacking Preston and Tom. Ethan leaves two snipers on the cliff, along with a gunner in one of the rovers, and then takes the others down into the valley to conduct a rescue.
On Earth, humanity is reeling and chafing under the rule of its alien masters. The Watchers have imposed ruthless order, fulfilling their ultimatums and decimating all resistance. Rolling blackouts plague the world as damaged infrastructure is still being repaired. For a long time people refused to go to work until the Watchers threatened to kill their children if they did not.
Now with tentative order established, Layla and her mother risk leaving the safety of their home to get morning sickness meds for Layla, who has decided to keep the baby. At the pharmacy they discover that all previous forms of payment have been subverted by alien ID implants and one global currency. Layla’s mother begs the pharmacist to give them the meds anyway, but the woman refuses, directing them instead to the nearest chipping station to get their implants.
Unbeknown to Layla, her mother swipes the meds and hides them in her jacket. As they’re leaving the store, the anti-theft alarm goes off, drawing alien drones to their location. Hovering black spheres hesitate only briefly before executing Layla’s mother on the spot. Horrified and distraught, Layla is beyond reason with fury. She brought a sidearm with her, even though bearing arms is now illegal. She’s about to draw it and open fire on the drones when the bearded stranger she encountered in Maine appears and stops her. He warns her that her daughter is too important for her to get both of them killed in a pointless act of defiance. The drones buzz off, and Layla is left to confront her mysterious guardian. She demands answers, but he refuses to give any, saying instead that she must go with him to speak with his boss who will explain everything. Layla rejects his offer and leaves on her own.
