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Edge of apocalypse 46
🕑 Added 2023-05-29 14:49:23 +0000 UTCIt was a sleep of no dreams. Or at least, no dreams that Albert could remember. Which meant no nightmares either, a very good thing considering that what happened prior to going to sleep should have triggered some of the most unsettling and vivid scenarios ever.
When Albert woke up, all he could feel was a pounding headache that beat like a drum inside his head, a thirst so bad it felt unquenchable, and the aching of every single muscle of his body. He reflexively looked at his arms, and they were wrapped in fresh bandages, soaked in a little blood that had clotted overnight. Pulling them loose revealed fresh, pink skin underneath, perfectly healed.
He looked around. He kind of remembered not passing out in his own bedroom, and yet it was here that he found himself to be. He also more or less vividly remembered thrashing half the room and painting the other half in blood in his scramble for the health potions, but there was no trace of any of that either. Before his mind could come up with time-travel, parallel universes, and whatnot, the system reared its head and made itself shown for the first time in a while.
[New quest: Daily Challenge – Time Management Skills.]
- Bullet Time has been a core skill for you for a long time now, but you never managed to upgrade it. Find a way to improve it, and bring it to level 2.
- Reward: Teleportation points added to Map: Quadrangle and Major City centers within 200km.
A huge quest for sure. But he could not concentrate on it now, because as his mind spun up to speed and brought itself awake, events from yesterday started to emerge and fall into place to paint a not-so-rosy picture of what happened.
He scrambled for his phone and called his mother.
***
Samantha Cromwell had been at the head of the Quadrangle for many years. She had been through more things than a normal person could ever dream up in a lifetime, from the day of the change of the guard emergency situations sprung up without fail – the likes of which only existed in the most dreadful pieces of fiction. Once she had heard her son talk with some of his friends about something called the SCP foundation, and in her free time she had looked into it to satisfy her curiosity and to somehow find bridges to connect with her son more. It was a time before she knew he was magically gifted.
Some of the things that went on in the Quadrangle could fit very well within that fictional universe of horrors, some creatures locked up in the cells below ground even worse than the run-of-the mill SCP horror, and many of which she had to bring in herself before they spiraled out of control. Such was the world when magic was a factor, and she was the one entrusted by the HDF to deal with the supernatural. Not for much longer, she feared.
Still.
Never had she seen something as bad as what the situation was today. Not one of the people who worked at the Quadrangle had been spared from mind-control. This morning, as soon as she woke up from her all-too-long nap she went back to her father’s house to check on him and on the aftermath of the battle. He was doing okay, the healing potions her son had administered to both her and her father had done their wonder and saved their lives.
The house was thrashed but it was not a big dead. Dead bricks could be repaired and replaced, people could not.
Then she went down in the sewers. What she saw made her reevaluate the skills of her son, and she came out of the hole in the ground thoroughly impressed. She had found PsyOps’ body, minus a large chunk of flesh and bone at the center of his ribcage, lying down on in a river of waste and sewage. Surrounded by scars in the walls from many fireballs, lingering traces of space, time and psionic mana, and discarded little crystals that matched the description of mana crystals her son claimed he could make.
It was hard to piece together what exactly had happened, but she was an expert and could mostly deduce how the battle must have gone down according to what her son told her of his powers and what she knew about PsyOps and SpaceOps. She integrated that information with whatever data the Quadrangle managed to gather from his – its – hijacked satellites, before giving the order to expunge everything related to the incident from the hard drives.
Which left the situation at the Quadrangle, by the time she received the phone call from her son and headed home, like this: no data on the drives about what happened, all of the former personnel turned into mindless zombies who mulled about without a shred of sentience left in their heads, and nothing to gleam from the Quadrangle should anyone investigate. And there was PsyOps’ body hidden away in a lab the Quadrangle created right for the purpose, waiting for her to perform all sorts of unspeakable things to it.
With the threat of information reaching the hands of the HDF – it was clear by now that they were not the ‘good’ guys she thought they were – she left and headed for the CARF.
Albert wanted her home, of course, but with all the upheaval of the other night none of them had even bothered to extract Marc from his prison cell. It fell onto her to be dutiful and responsible. Albert couldn’t, of course, having collapsed and woken up only now. Lloyd too was not in a condition to do stuff.
She was could have done it yesterday, after putting Albert to bed, but…
Well, Marc was in no danger in the CARF now that any PsyOps interference was gone. It was true that SpaceOps was still at large and not in a zombie state – the Quadrangle was tracking his movements – but so far he had not taken initiative and instead retreated back to safety. He was not going to be a problem in the short term.
The other reason why she waited to extract Marc was that she would have to vet him very thoroughly before releasing him back into society. The things he had seen, though nothing like what her son had seen and did, were dangerous information. By now she knew that Albert was much more than he let on, but she couldn’t say the same about Marc. If anything, Albert’s friend had allowed the stupid incident at the café to happen, which said a lot about both Albert’s maturity and how much she could trust Marc to be the mature one.
She went to the CARF and back to the Quadrangle by helicopter alone, in and out in a matter of a couple hours. Albert said he could wait, which was perfect. On the way to the CARF she had some time to think, about the future and what courses of actions she could take. There was still a Pilgrim invasion going on, getting worse by the minute. But it was also true that, with all probability, her time as the head of the BSA was about to come to an end.
As soon as the HDF arrived to take care of the aftermath – she could stall them but not avoid their arrival altogether – she was bound to get into all sort of trouble. She had a lot of weight to pull, especially with the Handler, and she was sure she could be granted the same sweet exit as her father, but it would be the end of all her ‘licensed’ business nonetheless. Which meant, since she knew she was the only one who took the invasion seriously, that she would need to work with Albert and outside legality.
This brought on the second point she was struggling to wrap her head around. What to do with her relationship with Albert. He was her son, and it was clear that she did not act the slightest bit like the ruthless head of the BSA when he was present in the room. Someone would say she was too soft, if not for the fact that the person who would say that was Lloyd and he was even softer than her when it came to Albert.
What a conundrum. The silver lining to all this was that Albert was surprisingly capable and powerful for being such a young and green mage. Perhaps she should trust him more. Now, then, what to do? Let him grow into his powers by himself, guiding him from the sidelines and helping him when he needs help, or take control and shape him into a formidable force?
Her motherly instincts begged for the first course of action to be enacted, but her status as a human concerned with the future of her planet asked for the second. Perhaps there was a middle ground she could walk on.
