The Luminosity Series (Book 1): Luminosity Read online

  LUMINOSITY

  BOOK ONE

  THE LUMINOSITY SERIES

  J.M. BAMBENEK

  LUMINOSITY

  Copyright © 2016 by J.M. BAMBENEK

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1530820818

  ISBN-10: 1530820812

  Table of Contents

  Part 1 : Before

  1 IMPACT

  2 AWAKENED

  3 PROGNOSIS

  4 FALLEN

  Part 2 : After

  5 REDEMPTION

  6 THE REQUIREMENT

  7 ABOMINATION

  8 BLACKOUT

  9 REUNITED

  10 SYMBOLS

  11 WASTELAND

  12 EVASION

  13 LIAR

  14 LETHAL

  15 SANCTION

  16 CROSS FIRE

  17 BLACK HOLE

  18 CONFESSIONS

  19 PROMISES

  Part 3 : Four Months Later

  20 ENIGMA

  21 UNVEILED

  22 REBORN

  23 WARRIOR

  24 BARRAGE

  25 PREMONITIO

  26 OBSOLETE

  27 ZERO HOUR

  28 CONTINGENCY

  29 INFERNO

  30 VENGEANCE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Part 1 : Before

  1 IMPACT

  On the eleventh night since their arrival, I couldn’t deny the possibility. Their thin spires of teal light slithered in the sky, weaving between the incoming clouds above me. It was my first time seeing the northern lights—a rarity in this region of the country. But along with their recurring glow came suspicion, a curiosity that begged to be put to rest. And that evening, their true consequence would emerge.

  A year earlier, rumors ignited on social media. People spoke of a secret—a conspiracy to shelter us from a disclosure that would alter life as we knew it. As outrageous as these claims sounded, no one could dismiss them, and as talk resurfaced, the lights became an everlasting signal. They screamed their message—this was more than a breathtaking phenomenon. This was a warning—a sign we couldn’t reject.

  It became the subject of debate for days. I wanted nothing more than to detach myself from the ridiculous conspiracy theories. But nowadays, we couldn’t avoid the garbage that the media pushed, making it impossible to decipher their attempts to calm us, and their hunger for intrigue. Even harder was it to separate fact from fiction. Worrying only seemed to heighten the paranoia. And after Evan’s dad died unexpectedly last year, I longed for life to be ordinary again. Little did I know, everything was about to get worse.

  That night, I took a deep breath, sitting in the driver’s seat. Already running late, the engine roared as I swung my old Chevy Malibu onto the freeway that led into town. The roads resembled a black river as sprinkles of rain trickled from the sky. My foot pressed down on the gas pedal, the momentum jerking me forward as my cell phone’s echoing chime bounced from all corners of the car’s interior. It was the third time he called—the third time we got cut off.

  “Hey. I’m on my way. I should be there in ten minutes.” I expected to hear his voice this time, but a crackle of static filled my ear instead. “Evan? Are you there?” After several seconds of dead airwaves, I hung up.

  It wasn’t uncommon for me to lose signal out here. Living in the mountainous region of Golden, Colorado was reason enough not to rely on cell signals. And with the potential for communication disturbances, I guess I should have known better. They talked about it on the news that week—a series of massive solar flares emerging off the sun. It had been wreaking havoc on reception ever since.

  He tried to call me back twice. Both times I answered to the eerie static buzzing from the other line. Desperate to understand what was so urgent, I ignored the road. And by the seventh unanswered ring, I knew something was wrong.

  Headlights glared against the wet road. They flashed in my peripheral vision as the tires hissed past me like snakes. I wanted to ignore my curiosity, but hundreds of cars occupied the freeway exiting town—too many for a Wednesday night.

  The horizon glowed a distinct cobalt blue amidst the dreary sky. The impending alarm rose as I considered all possible explanations. But only one made sense, and I refused to consider it.

  Now, larger raindrops pelted against my windshield, my wiper blades unable to keep the rushing blur of water away long enough. I flinched at the impatient roar of a gunning engine as their distorted headlights swerved around the other cars, avoiding collision by mere seconds.

  Close call, I thought.

  The hostile blaring of horns overwhelmed the rush of raindrops, sounding out of tune as they passed me by. Several police sirens wailed in the vicinity, getting louder as I progressed toward town.

  I dialed Evan again. The signal was choppy and the line continued to ring, never once reaching his voicemail. Distracted by my lack of connection, I tried to figure out where the sirens were coming from, but it was useless from my location.

  A parade of cars pulled over on the opposite side of the highway. After a few moments, the high-pitched scream of tires gripping the wet pavement caught my attention. This time, two more vehicles sped off, skidding around the others in my lane as I approached, too close for comfort.

  Near miss.

  My heart pulsed at full speed—a rate my breathing couldn’t keep up with. That’s when his voice broke through from the other line. But my relief to hear it was only temporary.

  “Evan! Can you hear me?”

  “Aubrey—road—right now. You—” he said between the overshadowed crackling.

  “What? I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up again.” I hung up for the last time. In an instant, my blood ran cold as the blurry red lights of an ambulance flashed in my rear-view mirror. Now, they raced in my direction, emerging from the darkness. I swerved to the side, washing through the shallow puddles without coming to a full stop. Once they passed, a grumble unleashed in the distance, shaking the ground beneath me. Then, my phone lit up again. Glancing too long at the screen, I veered off the road’s shoulder before the uneven ground jolted my head up. The phone rattled inside the cup-holder, demanding an answer like a pestering child refusing to be quiet. My tires squealed as I swerved into the right lane. And with the force of my jerky twist, the phone slid onto the passenger-side floor. Wide-eyed, I white-knuckled the steering wheel as I hydroplaned through the dark ponds of water ahead of me, nearly losing control of the vehicle.

  I blinked in shame.

  On the floor, my phone illuminated again as a reminder. With the quick catch of my panicky breath, I glanced at it in dread. No way would I try to reach for it, so I switched on the radio instead. Nothing. Every station was silent. Alarmed by the sudden lack of broadcast, I turned the dial a few times. Then, I heard it—the siren of the emergency alert system blaring through my speakers. After a few seconds of its horror-like tone, it faded into a sequence of choppy squeals and frequencies. But this wasn’t a test. Something awful was happening—enough to warn the entire region—enough for everyone on that stretch of freeway to stop and stare at the sky.

  As I slowed down, the distant noise intensified, thundering across the sky into rumbling waves as I peered above me to identify them. A helicopter?
Maybe, but it couldn’t be just one. This sounded like hundreds of them in sync to one another. Still, nothing was visible but a faint glow above the clouds.

  “What the hell is going on?” I whispered to myself as I pulled over, clicking the shifter in park along the shoulder of the highway. My hands shook as I reached for the phone, the wiper blades smearing against the windshield in an unsettling scream. That was when every suspicion rekindled as I listened to Evan’s voicemail.

  “Aubs, you need to turn around. I’m at the café downtown. The military is outside. No one knows what’s happening. They’re warning people to go home. The President is about to speak. The lights, they aren’t just happening here. They’re happening all over the world. It’s all over the news, on every channel. Don’t wait. Get home as soon as you can. Hurry, Aubrey...” Evan warned in a shaky voice, drowning out amidst panicked cries in the background.

  A sharp pain pierced my chest as I took a breath, and in that moment it crossed my mind again. The rumors. The stories. The talk of solar storms and auroras in the sky—it all aligned. Still, the truth terrified me. No doubt I needed to know what was happening. Everyone did. But I also had my whole life ahead of me—one I was free to live, unburdened by endless limits, by my mother and her sulking behind closed doors, by our broken family. But if the rumors were true, all of it would have been for nothing.

  A venomous chill came over me at the hint of possibility. My intuition crippled me, refusing to accept that this was just an elaborate hoax like people wanted to believe. Now, I’d give anything for it to be so simple.

  Trying to calm myself, I imagined Evan’s face when I met him at his father’s grave that year—the relief that was always obvious whenever I arrived. I pictured us in the years before, laughing together with Janelle and Aaron in front of the bonfire at the old campground. The way he looked at me after his father died gave away his fears. He worried one day he’d lose me too.

  Sixty miles per hour was the speed I reached after breaking through traffic—before a single pair of high-beam headlights raged toward me, blinding me in a collage of stubborn blue dots as I attempted to return home. I squinted to focus, but they remained in my vision. Forced to choose, it had come down to that one moment—my final decision to switch lanes, to free myself from their luminous glare. But instead of slowing down, the other vehicle sped up. And in that second, life threw me on the path of annihilation. With little to no warning, the car struck me on the side, sending me in a mad dash off the slick highway.

  In the time it took for me to blink, the ground shifted position. I screamed in panic, attempting to slam on the brakes to control the outcome of the collision. But I couldn’t stop. The bald tires screeched before the momentum betrayed me—the velocity tossing me around like a rag doll before flipping to a violent finish. I landed several yards from the point of impact, off the beaten highway. All I remembered was the scent of burned rubber and the sharp, piercing shriek of shattered glass. Soon after, everything went quiet.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I opened my eyes to distorted raindrops gathering in the cracks of my broken windshield. The heavy rain settled, but the smell of smoke choked me as it surged from the engine. A searing sensation radiated from my left side. Coughing sent a rippling wave of agony throughout my entire body. My headlights beamed through the smoke ahead, but the lights on the dashboard flickered, wanting to die. The buzz of the tires spinning above only added to the horror. Panic would soon follow. My car was in flames, and I’d burn with it if I didn’t get out. But there was no way out.

  Upside down, I remained trapped in the driver’s seat with my arm wrapped in an upward, twisted position, tangled around my seatbelt, mummified by its restriction. The windshield was cracked into thousands of squiggled lines, like a ten thousand piece puzzle ready to collapse. Tiny shards of glass dug into my skin as the familiar ringtone chimed from afar. Relentless blasts of car horns and infuriated shouts continued. The only thing people cared about, it seemed, was getting out of town.

  Instinct set in as the fire rose higher from the front end. I bellowed out for help, nearly passing out from the energy it took from me. But before long, a set of tires pierced to a halt from the dampened highway behind me.

  “Aubrey!” Evan rushed to the wreckage. After the slopping of his footsteps stopped, he crouched down in the mud to assess the damage. In the rain, his hair appeared darker, curled, twisted, and wet against his face. And when I noticed his wide-eyed expression, he was no longer recognizable.

  “Ev?” I heaved in delirium before suffocating on the fumes again. There wasn’t much time. But tugging on the seatbelt was no use as he tried to break me free. His body shook as he glanced at the smoke exhausting from the engine. Dread filled his eyes as he cringed at my fragile appearance. Panicked by the fire, he swiped the sharp edge of one of his keys back and forth against the thick fabric that imprisoned me. Soon after, the tension in my arm released, causing an indescribable throb as it broke loose.

  “I have to move you, okay?” Anxiety sunk into his voice. I cried, knowing the pain would be unbearable, nodding to him in acceptance. But he didn’t wait for my approval. Coughing from the billowing smolder, he grabbed ahold of me from underneath my arms, pulling and lifting me up gently out of the upside down window. I screamed out in torment as my body dragged and shifted position. We were a safe distance away before the sudden awareness of my injuries and the fear in his eyes staggered me. After grazing his hand on broken bits of glass, a drop of blood dripped down his palm as he reached for his phone, trembling with every movement.

  “Please, someone help! I’m—I’m off Route six about five minutes from town! My girlfriend’s been in an accident! We need a medic out here right away!” he yelled to the dispatcher as he turned back toward the highway.

  Girlfriend. I suspected he’d thought of me that way, but it wasn’t until that fateful night I learned how important I really was to him.

  His voice strained and cracked between breaths, tripping over his words. When he looked to me, a development of tears overwhelmed him.

  For several minutes, he repeated my name. He begged me to stay alert, to keep my eyes open, reassuring me I’d be okay. But judging from the intensity of pain, I knew better. My body ached against the pulsing ground as I stared up at the clouds. The sound sliced through them like knives as raindrops dribbled across my cheeks. The helicopters were visible now—their blades forming a reflective beam that ran parallel to the sky. Evan’s voice dissipated as my audio muffled, marking the beginning of my descent into unconsciousness. He screamed my name countless times as my vision blurred. But just before I accepted my fate, red lights flooded the side of his face from a distance behind me. His eyes shot upward in relief, waving the emergency crews over to us. As I drifted away, he cried out to them, until finally, it was over.

  Until that night, I had always been terrified of death. But my sudden welcome of it wasn’t a result of the crash. Suffering through the pain was nothing compared to what the universe had in store for us. Just hours after the impact, an announcement was delivered that would change everything—one that would unveil the darkest disclosure in human history.

  2 AWAKENED

  I woke to the synchronized beat of inconsistent beeping coming from the machine next to me. The oxygen pierced my lungs, like needles poking through a pin cushion. Ignoring the tears, I struggled to turn my head, and when I did, the pain stunned me into stillness. Judging from the complicated arrangement of tubes dangling beside me, I’d be here for a while. The burning ache pumped through my body, my heart rate accelerating faster from its impact. Chaos continued from outside as I directed my focus toward the window to my left. Evan was pleading with a nurse. Members of the emergency room staff flew past them in the hallways, fighting to keep up with the instant demand of patients. Shouts and cries rung in my ears—a confusing blur. But the desperation in Evan’s tone stood out amongst it all.

  “I can’t leave! Please! I’m the only one who
knows she’s here!”

  “I’m sorry, but we’ve been ordered to go into lockdown immediately,” the nurse cautioned.

  “No, you can’t do that! It’s out of control out there! People need help!” His eyes swelled as he gripped her shoulders.

  “The people outside are a threat to the patients’ safety. And that includes you. A member of the National Guard will escort you back to your home where you are to stay until things settle down.”

  “No. I—I won’t just leave her here like this!” His breathing quickened as she abandoned him in dismay. He glared at the nurse inside my room before his eyes veered to mine. The sight of me awake seemed to make him even more determined to reach me. His persistence never was a good match for the barriers between us, and when the nurse rushed out the door, he used her absence to his convenience, slipping into the room and dashing to my side.

  “It’s okay,” he choked through the fear, striving to catch his breath. My blinking was sluggish as he came into focus again. His face was weary, impatient, and weak as he kneeled beside the bed, taking my hand. I wanted to face him, but the neck brace was too heavy. Speaking was out of the question, my voice inaudible behind the oxygen mask. Lifting my arm, I swept my weak fingers over my aching face. Bruises pulsated along my jawline. The thick thread of stitches trailed beside my eyebrow, leaving an everlasting scar that would surely serve as distraction from my pale skin and dark, inky hair. My eyes grew larger, releasing a cold slither of tears along my cheeks, stinging the injuries—a sensation that reminded me I was still alive.

  “Hey. Look at me. You’re going to be okay,” he convinced in a heave, this time with the onrush of confidence as he searched for an escape from the fear lurking in his eyes. But while his presence comforted me, a jolting pain sliced through my core. Without warning, the pressure of air speeding through my lungs pressed against my chest with a force I couldn’t withstand. The heart machine jumped, the beeps raging endlessly as he glared at it in terror.