The room was split into two, well lit in the entryway and a literal void beyond the doorway to the actual operating room.

“Why is it so dark?”

Roger smiled as he watched the others wheel Brian in and down the walkway into the room.

“The surgery must be performed in zero light, and with as little sound as possible, Safehaven here is coated in a paint so dark it absorbs ninety-nine point eight percent light, I call it Void Black, not for sale yet, but I know a lot of artists who will go psycho for it once we make it public.”

He gestured to the helmets the surgeons were using.

“They are actually in a full dive VR, moving in there otherwise is impossible.”

Julio looked in the room, “Why does it have to be that dark?”

“Some of the materials used are very photosensitive, and once it’s done, so will Brian be for a little while too. Hi everyone,” the tall doctor who spoke hugged little Harris, “I see you all met my son, and I’m Doctor Harris, call me Dr.H.”

“H, my man, my brain, love of my life, how’re things?”

“A fact that still distresses my wife,” Dr. H laughed, and brought their attention to the monitors in the room. “We use soundwaves to generate the image, as any camera in the room would be all but useless, or emit light. Here you will see what the surgeon sees in real time.”

He brought up a video clip of what the surgery entailed, most of them too horrified to look away.

“You let your son see this?” Sandy said, sounding rather furious.

Dr. H looked down at his son with pride, but it was young Harris who spoke.

“It’s because I am the one who dreamt this up.”

“My son is a gift to our bloodline. A genius in the field of Fringe Sciences, and it was his dreams that led us to the source in the first place.”

You could see the pride in his eyes, “My son caused quite the rigamarole when he was even younger. Drawing pictures of his imaginary friend Aria, telling me about the tower he saw in his dreams, and where it was. It was all too,” he paused, a pensive look as he sought the words.

Roger jumped in, “I was just starting out then, had just made my first billion. I saw the two of them as H was giving a lecture on dreams and reality. He was laughed at like he was a quack. Talking about the way a child’s dreams could be a gateway to other worlds. But it wasn’t what he said, it was what he showed us that made the first of the people who joined him to make Project Greenleaf a reality.”

Roger opened his phone to show a picture, a child’s drawing, crudely drawn but unmistakable, a black tower rising into the clouds from a forest of red and green trees.

Everyone three knew it, knew that tower, knew those trees.

They had seen it in their dreams.

“I sank millions into finding the tower before I ever met them, I knew it was real. And here it was, drawn for me by a child. A month later I stood at the ridge of the mountain range around the crater it sits in.”

“You have actually been there?”

He nodded.

“And soon, we will all see it too.”

A sense of sheer euphoria washed over them all, the doors to the operating room opening up, and closing behind the nurse with the wheelchair.

“They’re ready,” she said calmly.

Very good, once the procedure begins the screams will be intense, but after the initial work, once he is integrated in, we will turn on audio so you can get a taste of~”

“No,” Sandy spoke up again, “I want to hear it all.”

Roger blanched a bit, but his salesman’s smile never slipped, and he nodded to the operator at the desk.

“Give us full audio.”

The air seemed to hum as the machines began to whirl up. Six mechanical arms coming down from above. The lidar looking image on the screen painted everything in white outlines, as if everything in the room was but paint on a chalkboard.

The first cut was not even the worse.

“Beginning incision.”

“I’m, AHHHHHHHHHHH!”

The screaming didn’t end for a long time, rising and falling as the poor man endured.

Then it happened.

“I HEAR THEIR SCREAMS!”

He shouted suddenly.

“THEY’RE WHISPERING IN MY HEAD!”

Roger pressed a button, silence suddenly enveloping them.

“This is the first stage,” he pointed to the screen as the mechanical arms arranged a series of wires into his vertebrae just bellow his skull. “This will open his ears to the other side.”

The screaming returned as he flipped the switch again.

More cries of anguish, pleas to make the voices stop.

Then the screams turned urgent.

“I can feel them!” He was quieter now, but still shouting, “Oh god! No! Please, no! They want to take me! They’re clawing at me! Please! Someone!”

Roger clicked the button, “We’re right here Brian. It’ll be just fine, I promise.” Roger turned to them again, “The touch, his senses are being drawn into the other side, searching for a strong connection. This next part is the most intense though. So I will ask, no one speaks till it is done.”

No one said a word though, no one except, Brian.

“HE IS COME! I can see him that stands atop a bloody alter, he brings us the power we seek!”

He coughed, a hacking sound as something that looked like mist began to dribble out of his eyes and mouth.

“This is the other side! The waters of the halls of elders, like honey it pours out and tastes of death and sweet reward.”

His face was suddenly in a smile, a rictus grin that made him appear so sinister.

“I am your~”

He was quiet a moment, then the sound came back and it was like nothing any but those on Roger’s pay stub would have ever heard before in real life. A soft crackling sound, like he had been hooked up to an old vinyl record player.

A fissle and pop as he began, “Speaker, and now we open the seventh seal, and there is silence in all the heavens about the space of half an hour.”

Roger had waited for this.

The seventh seal, the last one before the world was made new and whole, made better, no more bigotry, no more hate, just love, and understanding. Free power was the first step.

“I saw the seven Speakers which stood before their makers; and onto the speakers were given seven trumpets.”

The building shook as if hit from below, the world shifting.

He hadn’t expected that, and even Roger fell.

Sandy opened her mouth to speak, but he had waited to long, he put his gun in her mouth before he even realized he had it in his hand, putting a finger to his lips and hissing as he turned back to the monitors. The arms operating were gyroscopically controlled, so no amount of shaking threw the surgeon as she worked.

“And there, another came and stood at the bloody altar of the gods, bearing a great censer of stone black as pitch; and there was given unto him much incense of oak and ash and thorn, that they should offer it with the words of all believers upon the bloody altar which was before the throne.”

A smell filled the air, a thin mist seeping in from the hall as if the fog from bellow was rising up and filling the halls.

“The smoke of the incense, which came with the words of the Speakers, ascended up before their creators out of the their hand.”

It was unmistakable now, the quaking growing, Roger stood shakily and pushed H and Harris Jr. aside.

“And the Speaker took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake to break the halter of gods long lost below.”

A tearing sound filled the air, the ground shaking so violently, more than with any of those before.

This is it, he thought.

“And the seven Speakers which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.”

“And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God upon the earth.”

There was a pause, others around the room standing as the quaking stopped.

“Is that~”

BANG

Julio fell, the low caliber bullet still enough to put an end to his words.

“I said, QUIET!”

Everyone was still as the grave, most just looking at the now dead Julio as he fell to the ground.

A meek woman at the desk though, raised her hand.

“What?” Roger growled quietly.

Audio was coming in from the other locations.

“The wired warlocks, they’ve become Speakers?”

She nodded, and hit play.

“`ain and sores, and the mark of the beast king will bring rise to the skin of the decievers. And those who bear his mark will know no peace in their own flesh as their King rises.”

The adio cut out and the second one spoke, a woman, though in that same crackling vinyl tone.

“The second horn calls out upon the sea. Turn to blood, and let every living creature in it be as food to the great devourer, the serpent king, doomed to live and poison all who drinks of his waters.”

Her words died, but no sooner still were replaced by yet another Speaker.

“The third horn sounds out upon the rivers and springs of water, and they too will turn to blood as mirror breaks and ushers forth its denizens into new flesh. These spirits of the other side make no speech in praise of justice or gods, and is echoed by the voice from the bloody altar.”

“The fourth bowl is poured out upon the sun, low, the sky king rises. Wings vast they will beat and turn the day black as sackcloth. Yet no cloud will quench the sky as the sun scorches the people. But, they only curse the name of their God and do not know that there is no one left to repent to.”

“The fifth horn sounds out upon the throne of the beast. A thick darkness overwhelms the kingdom of the man, and the wicked hear his howl, and come to his call to be one with his pack.”

“The sixth sounds out through the halls of the ancestors, rigning the call to arms. The lines that have kept back the souls shatter fast to allow the lords of the Speaker’s to cross. Three unclean kings with the appearance of gods come, one each, out of the mouths of the vast gates from beyond the mirror, the beast king, and the serpent king, and the sky king, no longer in presense, but present. These plauges are neigh. for the miracle workers have done their task, to gather the nations of the world to them, the last horn to call.”

At last again, Brian spoke, silent so long, that the sound of him speaking so close made even Roger jump.

“The seventh horn sounds out into the air. And a voice from the bloody alter says~”

“It is done,” they all entoned that line as one.

“There is thunder and lightning, and a great mist which destroys the cities of the world, and splits the once great nations into three parts. The islands and mountains are destroyed, by hubris, and the three kings will know no master but~”

“Sssssssssssssam…”