Luca DR
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18 – Nuclear option (2/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-14 22:34:44 +0000 UTCTuesday morning came and went. It was not the notable part of the day for sure. What was, instead, was the inexplicable flash of light that immediately followed the spotting of a streak in the sky. It was so bizarre in fact, seeing a second dawn in the middle of the day, that it warranted a rewind of time just for the occasion. Albert immediately grasped the Hazegem that rested, as it always did, secure in his pocket to be carried anywhere he went and channeled mana into it.
Rewind time. 7 hours. Oh fuck, it was a nuclear explosion, wasn’t it? Shi—
Before his thoughts could even finish forming, the full extent of the rewind possible with his 21FU mana pool came to a completion. Seven hours of time advantage to be used at his own leisure, that brought him back to 5AM. It also would mean that his mother was going to find him missing from home, but there was a simple solution to that. He took out his phone and sent a text.
I couldn’t sleep. Am at a bar to eat breakfast then I will go directly to class. Don’t wait for me xD
And that was that. Now, he thought looking through the windows at the sky from the suddenly dark classroom, where was that missile headed? Working out that it was a missile, a nuke mounted on something like an ICBM propeller, had been the easy part. He googled it as soon as he saw the streak. It was before rewinding time, effectively erasing his name from any possible CIA watchlist that monitored suspicious searches. And it was before the thought of an ICBM, the idea of a nuclear bomb, and the sight of the blinding light all came together in his mind.
The brain had a particular tendency to ignore the obvious in some particular occasions. Like when it has to admit to being witness to a nuclear explosion bigger than the Tsar Bomba. But it got him the information he needed, and using maps to triangulate the direction of the light flash, it was clear that it was coming if not from Tryte, from its general direction at the very least.
Now, with Tryte being at the center of the weird storm that was happening, and with him already thinking that something was going on there that was not just the storm, it was not hard to find a connection. It was indeed Tryte, and something so bad had happened that the army had decided to drop a freaking nuclear weapon on the town.
It only now dawned on Albert that his quick thinking might have saved him. A nuclear detonation powerful enough to blind everyone, indoors, from several hundred kilometers away? Yeah, surviving the following radiation fallout, the shockwave and whatever environmental consequences were inevitably going to hit Temalas City would not be pleasant. He might not die, but he didn’t want to roll the dice on whether [Healing] could cure cancer. Not when the skill was still at level one.
[New quest]
- Quest: Investigate the anomalous event in Tryte, and find a way to save Temalas City.
- Reward: [Teleportation] skill video.
Yep. That was the idea.
Now, how does someone travel more than 200km at 5AM without a driver’s license? There was only a single idea that came to mind, and it was not a good idea. It was a terrible idea. It was the only idea, however.
Albert dialed his phone. Lloyd Cromwell.
Rewinding time meant that Albert had found himself locked inside the college classroom without a way out. It was early morning, with nobody around, and after a few minutes of waiting he already had enough mana to surgically use [Strengthening] to force the locks open and get out of the room. There were cameras in the corridors, thought, and he didn’t want to appear in the surveillance feed. This meant that he had to move around sneakily, checking every corner in Bullet Time as to make sure his head did not appear on video for more than a tiny fraction of a second. With the Hazegem on cooldown for 14 hours, he could not afford to mess up.
Meanwhile his grandpa was doing whatever it was that fell under the umbrella term of ‘don’t worry, I got this’. Their rendezvous point was near the campus for obvious reasons, and fifteen tense minutes later Albert was at the meeting point in the parking lot behind the college dorm building. There was nobody there. It was dark, but a calculated use of [Perception] allowed Albert to see well in the darkness in quick mana-saving bursts. And there was no trace of his grandpa.
Was he supposed to wait more? Should he text?
The questions turned out to be unnecessary when a car honked its horn right behind him, making him almost jump in fear. Deactivating the enhancements, [Bullet Time] and [Strengthening], that Albert had trained himself to activate as soon as he sensed danger, he was met with the snickering and laughing face of the old man.
“Caught you by surprise, didn’t I?” Lloyd laughed.
Albert snorted. “You did.” He said somberly.
Buildings raced by, the empty streets of the early morning allowing the two to make great time on their way to the freeway. “Okay kiddo. Tell me everything.”
There wasn’t much to say, really. “Just a bright flash. I am no nuclear weapons expert, but it had to be pretty big to light up the sky like that from that far.”
“If the target really is Tryte.” Grandpa argued.
“It must be. There is nothing else of interest in that direction.”
“That we know. But let’s assume you are right. It kinda makes sense with the flight time and everything. What do you think you will find there?”
“I have seen a couple of leaked videos but… I don’t know. I would say aliens?”
“From space? Be real kid, this is not the fifties. Aliens are a thing of the past. Area 51 is a joke nowadays. You should have seen it in the good ’ol days.”
Albert ignored the comment. “Probably not. With the system and magic and all… what if the system was preparing me to deal with stuff like this? It would make the threat less space-alien and more like… dimensional-alien, wouldn’t it?”
There was a slight queue of cars entering the city. Among the few vehicles going the other way, an awful lot were either army trucks and vans, or black cars with no license plate.
“And what do you plan on doing once you get there? Your magic… arsenal is a joke.”
Albert sighed. “I have a quest with a pretty hefty reward that asks me to save the city. Which means that… failure is not an option.”
“The system doesn’t accept failure, but do you?”
“It actually does, I think.”
“Ah.” Lloyd grinned. “You think the system knows that the city will be destroyed unless you complete the quest. That’s why it mentions saving it in rather bold letters. You are not to stop the event, or the detonation, are you? In fact…” he began, but trailed off mumbling. “You tell me. In what way does a nuclear explosion end up being particularly helpful for you?”
Albert thought about it. This was another of the old man’s lessons. “It erases all traces of my presence there.”
Lloyd nodded. “Quite right. I don’t think that you are to prevent the destruction of the Exclusion Zone, rather to make sure that whatever is there to contain the explosion does not fail to do its job.”
Albert nodded thoughtfully. It made sense. Whatever the military were doing it was not going to work, for some reason. And it fell onto him to make sure it did.
