Death of a Prophet

Doctor Anthony Simon tried hard not to look around as he ran through the corridors that were once his work place, and home. He was already on his last shred of self-control. It was one thing to see blood; it was another to know those walls were not painted red the last time he had seen them. His last resort to hold his composure was to keep focused on something else, which at the moment was simply how he had gotten into this mess.

-

Simon was never a popular child. Scrawny, very intelligent, and socially awkward, Simon was always an outcast, the brunt of a prank, or a target of bullies. This never really bothered him though. He accepted his solitude and thrived in it. He never knew his father, who had apparently just been some fling his mother had when she was young. His mother was always busy working, so he learned how to cook and clean before he was twelve, and made excessive use of his library card.

Simon loved books. When not at school, he was constantly reading, either at the library or in his room. By fifth grade, he had narrowed down his primary interests to space and physics and, while he didn't care for it a whole lot, he showed a natural ability in chemistry. It was no surprise when he graduated high school two years early, and began plowing through college like a fish in water, with enough grants and scholarships to carry him the whole way through. He filled every hour with classes, every day that they had classes, and spent the rest of his time in the local observatories and libraries. He took no time away from studies except to attend his mother's funeral, though he spared no emotional energy at her loss. A professor of astronomy offered Simon a room at his observatory in condolences and, though he didn't need help getting over his mom, he did need a place to live and jumped at the opportunity.

By the time he was eighteen, Simon was already nearing a degree in astrophysics and living in an observatory built on top of a library into which he had constant access. His life was nearly perfect.

-

Simon snapped out of his reflections just in time to keep from tripping over a mutilated corpse. It had once been a scientist like himself, but now looked like road kill that had stayed in the sun until it had burst. He would have gagged if he had not been running through an hour of hallways just like it. Strobe lights and sirens that comprised the emergency alarm, only worsened the overall hell of the situation. Each flash of light revealed new images of carnage, with bodies torn to ribbons and pieces thrown in every direction. He had lost everything he had in his stomach when he had run straight into a string of intestines that had gotten hooked on a hanging light and dangled like some gruesome Halloween decoration. After that, his gag reflex had become more and more numb. Simon carefully stepped around the corpse and continued running down the bloody, blinking hallway towards his only chance of survival. As he ran he turned his thoughts back to the past, trying to distract his mind as much as possible in order to retain some semblance of sanity.

-

The night of his graduation, Simon was approached by a pair of government agents with an offer that seemed to be too good to be true. They were from a secret government facility dedicated to the most classified of researches. Dubbed "The Hole" by most of the employees, the facility was an underground city. It housed nearly half a million scientists, military personnel, general workers, and their families. It ran completely off-grid using thermal, solar, and hydro-electric power, but could plug in to the grid at any time in case of emergencies. The Hole was a myth, a conspiracy and a shadow. Most of the people who lived there did not exist outside, had no communication with the outside, and didn't even know where exactly The Hole was located, aside from somewhere in the United States. Only the scientists most trusted, with studies requiring them to go above ground, and the people who ran the complex, ever saw the outside. Simon would be one of those scientists. Simon was dubbed a theoretical astrophysicist, and was to be hired straight out of college. The majority of his studies and work revolved around the sun and, as it turned out, the government was in the process of doing experiments on stabilizing our sun.