Twenty Four: Prologue

The countdown has begun. Twenty four hours till the end of the world. In less than a day the earth would be annihilated. And only Jay knows about it. Seconds are ticking. Time is flying. The madness must be stopped.

Jay LeBord had stumbled upon a secret meeting of the elite planners. A secret society that only a chosen few knew existed. Jay had hid, unnoticed, in the shadows of the middle school attic. He hadn’t really cared about the men he saw gathered before him. He hadn’t understood the true meaning of the congregation. At least, not until two words had caught his attention. Two nearly silent, deadly words. Mass murder. Three equally lethal words followed. Destroy the earth. The rest was clear in his mind. How the gray-haired man with a hunched back and blue eyes had stood up and explained the plan, step-by-step. How the group had burned stacks of diagrams and maps. How, after the others had disassembled and filed out one by one, disguised as teachers, the leader had stayed back. How the sinister man had nearly discovered Jay hiding in a shadowy corner of discarded chalkboards and computers.

Yes, he remembered that evening clearly. He knew that in a matter of seconds, a set of highly destructive nuclear and atomic missiles would be released from their age-old lairs and launched into space. Even the president was too lowly to control these missiles, these toys of destruction. A single one could obliterate half of the Northern Hemisphere. When twenty four were in play, the consequences were much more fatal.

Only one person had the power to launch these murder weapons. For decades, as the man in power had changed, the missiles had stayed safely hidden and unused. A single, insane person now rules the elite group. And a single person is all it takes to destruction.