Available Darkness Season 1

finding velocity as it crashed towards an unknown doom.
    No, not again!
    Suddenly, a tether snapped him back to reality — Larry’s hand on his shoulder, his voice in his ear, “Hey buddy, you okay?”
    John nodded as he felt the real world return.
    But the world was somehow darker. An overwhelming sense of doom had taken root in his head, pressing on him from outside and within. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something horrible was about to happen. He could feel it like a cold wind announcing a dark storm on the horizon.
    “Abigail?” Larry said, looking up and past John.
    “Where’s Abigail?” John asked, still groggy.
    “Here,” a voice said from behind.
    John turned to see one last gunman standing about 10 yards away, one hand gripping her shoulder tightly, the other holding a pistol dug into Abigail’s temple.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 3 — John

    “Leave her alone!” John growled, turning to face the gunman holding Abigail. Her eyes were wet and crimson; face stained pink from crying. She opened her mouth to speak, but the masked man clamped his hand across it.
    “You need to come with me,” the man said to John.
    “No fucking way.” Larry lifted his rifle, aimed it at the man’s head and said, “Let her go.”
    “If you shoot me,” the gunman said calmly, “my finger will twitch, this gun will go off, and she will die. It’s all very simple, really. Or … we can end this peacefully. John comes with me, you take the girl, and this never happened.”
    The man was Brock, John recalled from memories he’d stolen from the squad. A real badass. He wasn’t bluffing — he would shoot Abigail without flinching if he thought all was lost. He had no compunctions about killing, and his past was littered with bodies he put in the ground, men, women, children.
    Brock worked for the same man he saw in his vision. The one who took Abigail and then let her go. And now John had a name to match the bald man’s face.
    Jacob.
    “Put down the gun,” John told Larry.
    Larry didn’t budge. “No way you’re going with him, John. Trust me, it won’t end well for you.”
    Brock looked down at Abigail, “Tell them Abigail, do you want to die today?”
    She looked up at John, eyes now flooding in tears, and whimpered, “No.”
    John, heartbroken, turned to Larry, stepping between he and Brock and directly into Larry’s line of fire. John looked his old friend in the eyes, they were wild and a bit scared, but also angry. Sweat drenched Larry’s brow.
    “Let me go with him,” John said, “you take Abigail and watch over her until I come back.”
    “I can’t let you do that,” Larry said, shaking his head, looking past John and at the gunman, “The minute you go, they get what they want. I can’t let that happen. YOU can’t let that happen. This is more important than one person’s life.”
    John couldn’t believe what Larry was saying. Pondering Abigail’s death for even a second twisted cold steel deep inside his heart.
    “Larry,” John said, trying to influence whatever compassion might be resting in the man’s core. “She’s just a child.”
    Larry blinked the sweat from his eyes, doing his best not to look away from the gunman and Abigail.
    “You don’t get it John, you would choose the same thing. You chose burial to protect the secret, to keep it from them.”
    John wished he could remember something from his past life, anything. It was hell on earth wondering what was so important; serious enough to swap for the life of a child. He couldn’t imagine anything important enough, except …
    Hope?!
    “Is it … Hope?” he asked, mentioning his love’s name to Larry for the first time.
    Larry’s eyes widened in recognition, then froze on John for a moment as though trying to taste the right answer.
    It is Hope.
    Dark despair dug its talons deeper into John’s brain. Something horrible was about to happen. He could feel it racing forward — a train off its tracks, and he, fate’s passenger, with no control.
    “Doesn’t matter,” John said. “Abigail needs me. Needs us. Now.”
    He turned to Brock, “What do you want me to do?”
    “Get in the back of the van,” Brock said, pointing to one of the identical black-windowed black vans behind him, “there’s a special cell to ensure you won’t … well, you know,” he said nodding his head in reference to the dead bodies between them. “Once you’re inside, and I’m in the driver’s seat, I’ll let the girl go and