"My fellow Americans and human beings of the world." the President began with a sad look on his face.
"For many of you, you will not understand what I am about to say or the actions that I and many of the other leaders of the world are about to do. Even less of you will approve.
However, we as leaders feel that you should at least be informed. News has spread of the secluded incidents around the world. Horrible mutations of both plants, animals, and even people. These mutations are a serious threat to humanity and if left unchecked can threaten not only our way of life but our status in the world order.
The militaries of the world are already responding to the threats as they appear around the world, yet the source of the mutations has not been dealt with making all of our actions redundant as new mutants beasts, plants, and twisted humans will continue to appear and threaten us."
I felt a chill run down my spine. The only ones who had termed the mutated humans as twisted were those from the havens and my parents. It seemed that those who had lived through this before had been in contact with the president and the other leaders of the world. It made sense yet it frightened me. I remembered what my father had told me. I had no idea which group had come in contact with them, but there could only be one reason to do so. Creating a sanctuary, at least that was the impression my father gave me. The question was what did they convince the leaders of the world to do?
"Worse, with each appearance of the twisted, not only will we be subjected to their threat, but we must remember that we have lost one of our own. Someone's parent, sibling, or child could no longer resist the corruption and was taken away from us to never return.
For that reason we have decided to take drastic measures to stop the source of this mutation and save the rest of humanity from such a cruel fate." the President of the United States informed the world with a troubled but determined expression.
It was his next words that froze me in place unable to believe what should be obvious for me. "For those of you who are within the affected areas I can do nothing more than apologize to you and assure you that your sacrifice is necessary for the human race as a whole."
I shivered as I watched my phone with rapt attention.
The president pulled a smartphone out of his jacket then brought it to his mouth. "I give my consent to the mission, security code Alpha, Whiskey, Five, Seven One, Charlie, Bravo."
With those words the president seemed to deflate a bit on screen. "God help us all." he muttered then the screen went blank.
I looked up from the screen my mind blank trying desperately to understand the implications while denying the possibility of what it all meant.
"We have to leave!" Derek roared loudly a desperate look on his face.
'Daryl! Daryl!' multiple women started shouting in my mind fearfully waking me from my frozen state.
I didn't want to believe it but I had too. The president had given up on this area and he was likely to have ordered some kind of bombing. It had seemed like he intended to deal with the gate, but I had no idea how he could do that no matter how many bombs he dropped.
Either way we needed to leave, immediately. Looking back at Derek and the others I immediately felt lost. I couldn't move all of them, I was still tired from the last space tunnel and would need to open a longer one to get us to a safe location. I had no idea what the president intended to use but I should expect the worse.
'Use your space ability to put up a shield.' my father told me. 'As long as you completely enclose the space it will keep you out of that dimension preventing any injury.'
I frowned but I didn't have any better ideas. I could take a few people with me to Grand Junction but I would have to abandon the rest and that didn't sit well with me.
"Get everyone to gather around me." I told Derek.
Derek looked at me confused for a moment but then nodded and started to give orders.
Quickly everyone rushed out of the planes and started to gather around me. I gave them all a few moments to gather then began to pull on my space ability. I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to do it, but as I hesitated my father's voice came to me in my head again explaining the process of spreading a thin layer of space around the group like I had used the wind barrier earlier. However he had me include the space under our feet so that the area was completely sealed by my space ability, as soon as it had been completed I felt a slight shift in the air around me. The air where I had placed the space barrier became a bit hazy like I was looking through fogged glass.
With the barrier set I became nothing more than a battery. Curious as to what was going to happen I moved through the crowd to the edge of the barrier and peered outside towards the stadium. If they were going to deal with the source I could only believe they were going to attack the location where the gate had appeared.
We didn't have to wait long. A few seconds later we could see a missile coming in from the north east heading in our direction. We couldn't see the missile itself but the white trail it left in its wake was easy to make out, I was just surprised by how fast it was moving. It seemed far faster than it should be.
'Do you know what they are trying to do?' I asked my father in my mind. If he was able to instruct me how to construct a barrier he had to be paying attention to the situation.
'Collapse the natural space tunnels between the worlds.' my father replied. 'Use some mana in your body ability so the blast doesn't blind you.'
What? No they couldn't be! I shouted in my mind but did as I was told channeling some of my mana into my body ability. "Don't look at the blast!" I yelled loudly.
A moment later the missile started to descend making a sharp arc as it aimed for the stadium. As it nearly hit the ground I closed my eyes, focusing my mana on my eyes then the rest of my body, just in case.
I didn't feel anything, but I heard it. Immediately some of my mana redirected to my ears trying to heal the damage done by the blast.
'Open your eyes!' my father shouted at me in my mind. 'I have to see this!'
I opened my eyes but my father's words chilled me to the bone.
Yet the sight in front of me pushed any thought of my father and what he was doing from my mind.
I had seen the mushroom cloud in many videos growing up, but no matter how many I had seen it was nothing in comparison to seeing it rising up into the sky only a few dozen miles away. My barrier was outside of the range of the fireball but the force of the blast was still immense. Everything around my barrier had been destroyed, the buildings were flattened, and the planes were pushed away from us their windows shattered wings bent, and that was only the obvious things I could see with a quick glance.
The mushroom cloud towered above us drawing my attention back to it as it rose up into the sky.
Then to my surprise everything seemed to freeze for a moment like time suddenly stopped. It only lasted for a moment but a great sense of danger came over me, not in the traditional sixth sense, but the warning feeling I had been getting about the third wave went into overdrive.
The mushroom cloud in front of us began to be drawn back in shrinking as we watched, looking around I could see other items and debris start to flow back towards the stadium, kind of like watching the video in reverse except none of the damage that had been done was fixed.
Within moments the cloud had disappeared from sight sucked back down to the ground. We weren't close enough to see what was happening directly but we didn't have to wait long. Moments later a yellow mist began to flow in our direction faster than the explosion from the nuclear warhead.
'They failed.' my father said with a sad tone.
'What?' I asked my father watching the yellow mist fearfully, but he didn't reply to me.
I tried to calm myself by reminding myself that I had a space barrier between me and the rest of the world.
Yet I couldn't relax as the warning in me increased as the mist came closer. I didn't mean to worry them but before the mist reached us I sent a mental message to all my girls. "I love you.' it might not have been the best idea but I was panicking.
The yellow mist hit my barrier then went through it like it didn't exist. When it touched me I could feel it rushing into my inner space. Only then did I realize what it was. Mana, crazed mana that was released with the energy waves so dense that it was visible.
My abilities immediately began to absorb the mana but it was too much, to fast, overwhelming me. I screamed out as the mana filled my inner space pushing at the borders until I felt like I was about to explode. Then the world went dark as I passed out.
When I opened my eyes to see the blue sky above me I was a bit muddleheaded, somewhere inside of me I was a bit surprised that I could even open my eyes. I wondered if I was dead but with a groan I realized I couldn't be, it hurt to much.
I channeled some mana into my body ability to speed up my healing ability only to be surprised when all the aches and pains in my body disappeared quickly.
That didn't seem right. I closed my eyes again to look into my inner space. It was a mess, whatever my mother's ability was seemed to have awakened and dragged all of my elemental abilities away from my mana core. They now floated below my mana core. In the center was a golden crown set with six large gems of different colors. The elemental abilities had changed a bit, not visually, but they felt different. Instead of just seeing an image of the element when I looked at the corresponding element I felt it. Looking at the water made me feel like I was in a pool of water, looking at the wind made me feel like I was in the midst of a strong breeze, my connection to the elements seemed to have strengthened considerably.
Whether that was because of my mother's ability or the fact that none of my elemental abilities had less than four stars I wasn't sure. All of my other abilities also had more stars and time had finally manifested.
My bonds hadn't changed much but I was reassured when I felt them, they all seemed to be safe. I could only feel half the girls clearly with the marital, intimate, and master bonds but since the others were supposed to be with them I was sure I didn't need to worry about them for the moment.
I felt a wriggling in my space and glanced inside to see the purple twisted was no longer purple. Her skin had changed to a metallic silver color that contrasted deeply with her black hair and eyes. It was strangely erotic making me want to crawl into my space with her and explore every inch of her body. I resisted as I knew that while I could accomplish it, it would be nothing short of rape.
I opened my eyes again to see what had happened to everyone else. Yet as I opened my eyes I saw a haze in the air that drew my attention. As I watched the haze seemed to dissipate until I could clearly see an object floating in the sky above. It was enormous, so big that it even dwarfed the mushroom cloud of a nuclear warhead.
Yet my mind just couldn't understand how that could be there floating in the sky like it belonged there and had been there the entire time.
'Father!' I shouted in my mind trying to find the bond that linked the pair of us, only to realize the bond was gone.
I had no idea what to think but staring up at the enormous brown stone inverted pyramid that covered the sky I didn't dwell on it.