Zein: The Prophecy Read online

  All these thoughts were banished from his mind as the impressive stadium of Manchester United came into his vision. He caught the sign on the right hand side of the road “Matt Busby Way”. At the end of the street was an enormous structure of concrete, glass and steel. The steel guilders at the top of the stadium reached high into the sky. The large letters “Manchester United” sat at the top of what was called East Stand. Kabel’s breath was taken away. He now knew what had drawn his father to this place.

  The daunting East Stand with its glass façade was adorned with a bronze figure. Kabel would not have known this was the figure of one of the most iconic managers in football history, Sir Matt Busby. He also saw the three bronze figures with their arms around each other, situated in front of the East Stand.

  If that was the East Stand then the North Stand was the next stand, which dwarfed the others.

  He found that they were being funnelled into queues with the human marshals sandwiching the football fans. The humans were separated and roughly this happened according to the colour they were wearing. The queue went slowly but eventually he went through the turnstiles. He was asked to open his bag but there was very little in it now. They all came together once they had safely got past the security gates.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Bailey.

  ‘North Stand,’ Kabel replied.

  ‘This way,’ said Tyson. They moved in line with the flowing sea of human bodies. He wondered how his mother was coping with all the recent news.

  ***

  Back at her house Leila placed the empty cups into the dishwasher, her thoughts tumbling like an out of control acrobat in her mind. She thought her memories of Logan had long since passed but seeing Kabel brought them all back as if it had all just happened yesterday.

  There was a noise from the hallway. Curious, she closed the dishwasher and went to the kitchen door.

  ‘Who are you?’ she yelled. Facing her was a tall man with a tattoo on one side of his face and a scar on the other. Leila ran back into the kitchen to grab a knife and ran into with what she thought was a man, a mask covered the top half of his head. He grabbed her and turned her to face the man in the hall, holding her in an arm lock. General Chad walked past her without saying anything.

  ‘I will call the police if you don’t leave,’ Leila threatened. General Chad ignored her and his eyes swept the kitchen. He saw the opened season ticket on the table with a ticket torn out. He looked at the season ticket thoughtfully and pulled out the stubs he had taken from the other house they had just come from. He then placed them both into his pocket. ‘Bring her,’ he said. He pressed a button on a wristband, as did his companion and they vanished into the air.

  Leila felt sick. The pull of the teleport made her feel dizzy and disorientated. She could only see a vortex of spinning lights and then all of a sudden the spinning seemed to slow down until the room began to form. She was no longer in her kitchen. She was standing on a large metal platform surrounded by four tall towers of steel. The platform was in an enormous hangar filled with small craft and troops standing to attention. The arm around her still held her tightly as they made their way down a large ramp into the heart of the hangar.

  Leila took it all in. She saw the little things as well. The fearful looks given by the young children carrying bags laden with what looked like crystals, men and women working on the ships looking tired and frightened. She walked out of the hangar into a extensive walled courtyard framed by large lawns. Dominating the area was a building, twenty storeys high. Floodlights were situated on the roof alongside large manned guns. On the courtyard there was row after row of tanks; so many that they stretched out to cover the lawns. The whole area was ringed in by a domineering wall.

  The man with the tattoo beckoned the man holding her to follow him. They entered the grand looking building and walked through corridor after corridor made up of block stone until they arrived at a curved metal door which enclosed a lift. The lift took them quickly up and when it opened Leila was faced with a broad corridor flanked by soldiers who wore the same masks as the man holding her. At the end of the corridor large curved doors some twelve feet high stood closed. In front of the doors were another two faceless men. The two men opened the door and they entered a huge hall. There was a throne-like seat at the end of an impressive room. There was a guard on either side. However, that is not what caught her eye; sitting on the throne was an imposing figure clad in black and red armour.

  It can’t be. He’s dead.

  ‘Greetings, welcome to the Southern Quadrant Palace,’ said Zylar. ‘Release my guest,’ he commanded the soldier, who immediately did so. He stood up and approached the still shaking woman.

  ‘Keep calm,’ she told herself.

  ‘I apologise for the rudeness of General Chad, he is a little short of the niceties required for female company,’ he said smoothly. Leila was dumbstruck. The light from the long sash windows filtered through and lit up the face of the man in front of her.

  In front of her was a replica of Kabel’s father. His face was thinner and gaunter; however, the likeness was striking. Her hand went to cover her mouth.

  ‘You seem to recognise me?’ Zylar thought he couldn’t be surprised any more. Leila immediately dropped her eyes.

  ‘But I have not met you before. I would remember, as you are very beautiful.’ He reached across and touched her cheek. Leila was repulsed and pulled away. He was cold.

  ‘Just a minute,’ suddenly he had an idea. He placed a crooked finger under Leila’s chin and raised her face to look at her.

  ‘I wonder.’

  Don’t give him the satisfaction. Leila combated her nerves, which were making it difficult to retain her balance.

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ Leila said. She was shaken by recent events and her mind was in complete turmoil, her previous calmness evaporating under a battering of new experiences.

  ‘You knew my dear brother,’ he said slowly. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I did think the stories of my brother’s human lover where just a figment of other people’s imagination in a hope of saving their lives,’ he said, chilling her to the bone.

  He is a monster.

  ‘They died of, course, but it seems they spoke the truth. How charming,’ Zylar continued. He looked questioningly at General Chad.

  ‘We followed a weak signal from Blackstone to one house and then another to this woman’s house and found this.’ He showed Zylar the season ticket and ticket stubs. Zylar backed away from Leila and took the tickets. He looked at the missing ticket in the season ticket package.

  ‘So why does my nephew seek you out, I ask?’ he asked, closing the distance between them. Leila stared at him not saying anything. Inside she was a mess.

  He doesn’t know about Tyson.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ General Chad asked. Zylar studied Leila for a moment.

  ‘Make sure our guest is comfortable. It’s not every day we have a human here,’ he walked away and then turned back. ‘That Southgate Clan girl you have taken a fancy to, let her look after our guest in the main guest suite.’ General Chad inclined his head in acknowledgement. He motioned for one of the Eastern Quadrant Palace guards to take her away.

  Once alone, General Chad waited for his orders. It was not long before he received them. ‘Take two regiments of the Ilsid to Earth,’ Zylar said looking at the season ticket, ‘Visit this Old Trafford and find young Blackstone. If anyone gets in your way demonstrate that it is not a wise decision to impede Zylar the Emperor.’ Zylar grinned with such malevolence that General Chad caught his breath in fear of triggering his superior further.

  ‘It’s about time Earth had a taste of my law,’ said Zylar, sitting down on the State Room throne. Dismissed, General Chad hurried out of the room to carry out his orders.

  Chapter 12

  The Emergency Portal

  After they had all safely manoeuvred through the turnstiles the companions walked into th
e East Stand.

  The East Stand, or the Scoreboard End, was like the West Stand and split over two tiers, with the lower tier split into two sections, Upper and Lower. The upper tier is officially called ET2 and the lower tier ET1. The rear of the East Stand contains the Manchester United Megastore.

  They made their way past the ET1 tier towards the North Stand, which was now called the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand.

  The North Stand has three tiers and is the largest stand within Old Trafford, housing approximately twenty-six thousand spectators. The lower tier, known as NT1, is split into Upper and Lower sections, the upper section containing the Manchester Suite for executive seating. The second tier is named NT2 and contains the Salford Suite executive section. The third tier is known as NT3.

  They made their way into NT1 and then joined the slow progression on the steps to NT2 and then NT3.

  It was Tyson who found the first drinking fountain on the third level in the North Stand. There was already a queue of people waiting to use it. Kabel immediately went to it, causing a couple of the children using it to complain that he was not queuing. He ignored their complaints. Kabel touched the fountain and nothing happened.

  ‘Next one,’ he shouted. The hallway was packed with fans trying to get to their seats, queuing for food or waiting to go to the huge toilet blocks.

  ‘How are we going to find it in this madness?’ said Bailey, kicking the floor in frustration as he was nearly bowled over by the pushing and shoving crowd.

  ‘We should wait until the start of the game and then it should almost be quiet,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Good idea, Sis, you’re not just an ugly face.’ Gemma stuck her tongue out at him playfully.

  Tyson was in a daze. His mind was overloading with the thoughts of all the people walking around him. In the space of a few minutes he had heard many private thoughts, ranging from did someone lock the front door to unhappiness in their relationships. Gradually, however, he began to control it and it became a trickle.

  In the end they realised that Gemma was right and that they could not make their way through the crowds to search for the emergency portal. They decided to wait until the game started and bought some soft drinks and hot dogs.

  Where is my Dad? A small child looked up at him. The boy was leaning against a wall struggling to hold back his tears. He was lost. No one stopped to help because the child was not telling anyone, petrified of the mass of people pushing past him. Tyson stopped.

  ‘You lost, kid?’ The young boy in answer glanced sorrowfully up at him. Tyson saw a steward and waved him across.

  ‘Look, this boy is lost.’ The steward spoke into his walkie-talkie and took the small child off to find his Dad.

  ‘That was a good thing to do,’ said Amelia, and a faint smile played across her lips.

  ‘They will find his Dad,’ grunted Tyson as he looked across at their other companions. She saw the look he gave Gemma as she shared a joke with Kabel.

  ‘You really like her don’t you?’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘It was obvious back in primary school,’ Amelia replied softly.

  ‘I am not like you. I don’t throw myself at any Tom, Dick and Harry like you do,’ he retorted, a little irritated.

  ‘I am not having a go at you.’

  ‘Look, you should look at your own love life rather than comment on mine.’

  ‘I am.’

  Tyson, who had been scanning the corridor for another water fountain, caught himself. The tone. He looked up at Amelia and it didn’t take his ability to read minds to understand the intention of the words. She really liked him.

  ‘But you have had all those boyfriends…’ he tailed off, realising what he was inferring. He didn’t mean it to sound like that.

  ‘Only to get you to notice me,’ Amelia had bowed her head. I can’t do this. He thinks I am easy.

  ‘I don’t,’ Tyson said, but then realised that Amelia was blushing and beginning to look pretty angry.

  ‘Oh, so now you can read minds I can’t think for myself without you knowing. Great.’ If steam could be produced from ears just like in the cartoons, it would be now. ‘Well Mr Tyson Mountford, yes, I have had many boyfriends, I have kissed a few and fooled around a little but that is all.’ Amelia tried to control the pent up frustration of many years.

  ‘You are the one I have always wanted but you can’t see past Gemma. Now you can’t have her as she has someone else.’ She caught her breath. ‘And you will never, ever have me.’ With that she stormed off to join the rest of the group.

  Tyson was stunned. He couldn’t form a thought, his mind already straining to block out the crescendo of voices he could hear. He just couldn’t handle this other conflict of emotions. He felt his body begin to react and felt the prickling at the end of his fingertips as his magics began to surface. His confusion and the rising magics were interrupted as Bailey shouted him across to the other side of the corridor. They were talking to one of the stewards.

  He saw the crowd begin to disperse as they made their way to their seats for the start of the game. He made his way across studiously avoiding looking at Amelia.

  ‘This man says there are three water fountains on this floor,’ said Bailey. ‘You OK, mate?’ He noticed that Tyson was a little flustered. Tyson waved away his concern. Bailey had never seen his usually confident friend so subdued……ever. He made the decision there and then. He would follow and look after his best friend wherever this quest took them…anyway there may be some nice girls to meet along the way.

  Outside the remaining waiting football fans were queuing when suddenly there was a loud pop. The crowd at the back of the lines instinctively turned to see what the noise was only to be faced with a sight that struck terror into them.

  Three levitation tanks appeared suddenly, followed by five hundred armed Ilsid. They formed lines behind the tanks, which started to blast the crowd in front of them. Many died in the first round of fire.

  Bedlam ensued.

  Mothers and fathers scooped their children up and ran but found nowhere to go. Groups of friends initially froze, then, as if electrified, started running off in all directions. The Ilsid fired off photon shots indiscriminately. Male or female, child or adult, all suffered.

  A man holding his four year old son was shot at close range by a photon blaster. The pure bolt of energy went through his chest and tore a hole through his son. They collapsed to the floor. Dead. Unmoving.

  The police on horseback tried to control their maddened horses to no avail. Most were thrown from the saddle. When the officers who were not injured by the fall tried to stand up they were shot down by the ruthless Ilsid. Stewards tried to open the turnstiles and doors to the East Stand to let the masses in for some element of respite or cover. The Ilsid began to target the bib-wearing officials. Many a brave steward died that day.

  The tanks glided forward with their gift of death.

  In the North Stand people were running everywhere. The explosions outside reverberated around the ground. Fans were going onto the pitch and down the players’ tunnels following the same path that the footballers, who had been warming up on the pitch, had taken. Many fell. A young woman lost the grip of her boyfriend’s hand and the sheer weight of people behind her pushed her to the grass. The crowd continued to surge forward. The woman became a stepping stone for the hundreds of people behind her. Her body was crushed into the turf becoming one with the mud and grass. Her boyfriend was caught in the momentum of the mob mentality of the crowd, caught up in their own terror, they surged forward not allowing him the luxury of looking for his girl.

  Outside the stadium the tanks glided forward and began to blast the fences so their soldiers could march forward unrestricted with their photon shotguns at their hip. A deadly arc of fire sliced through the crowds in front of them.

  General Chad was in the final tank, his head and upper body raised out of the turret. He was holding a device given to him by Zylar. It was capable of
tracking Kabel Blackstone.

  A faint signal was given. They were in the stand next to the East Stand. He immediately instructed his gunner to fire high into the East Stand to clear a way for him to land and set down the tank.

  Staff in the offices in the East Stand saw the shouted instruction and the finger pointing up at their offices as they gazed in horror at the killing below.

  ‘Move away from the windows now,’ someone shouted. They ran in panic to the doors to the corridor. They ran away as fast as they could. That didn’t save them. The walls and glass gave way as the blasts ripped into them, the glass and steel cascading down onto the hard pressed people below.

  The bronze figure of Sir Matt Busby tottered and then fell, crushing the people unlucky to be directly under it.

  The levitation tanks rose up effortlessly. General Chad instructed the other two tanks to enter the stadium by going over the top of the structure and attack the North Stand from inside. He didn’t want any escape. The other two tanks rose high up in the air and went over the white steel structured roof. They met an incredible scene. Seventy thousand people where fleeing or hiding in the stadium. Screaming in fear. The Ilsid in the tanks had their orders and they opened fire on the North Stand. Thousands died. The once great stadium burst into flames.

  Some people were lucky, escaping through the players’ tunnels or finding a convenient place to hide. Many didn’t.

  Outside the East Stand there was a large man hiding behind the three bronze statues. Tattoos covered both arms. Bald head gleaming with sweat. He wore the red of Manchester United.

  He watched the death and destruction in front of him. The Ilsid had thrown away their guns, revelling in the massacre and were scything through the remaining humans with their seckles.

  The man was no coward. He looked at those near him and there were approximately ten men, women and children crouched down hiding where he was. He felt an anger rising within him, intense, overwhelming, an anger which the human race had shown time and time again; the ability to rise up and meet head on and defeat repression. He made his mind up; if he was going to die he would die fighting.