Chapter 60
Cold Apathy
By the time they got to the barracks that housed the selected soldiers, their group had grown from four to nine. It included Sarah, whose existence was still shrouded in the seed of doubt within Ethan, as well as the man who supposedly was the one responsible for what eventually became of HUMAN–Lieutenant General Zachery Collins, Michael's second in command.
The man was well into his sixties, though appeared fit enough to lead the role. He was just short of six feet tall, bald and grey-bearded, with beady, black eyes shiftily glancing between Ethan and Ronald. Beyond the two were some other senior figures of the military whose introductions Ethan ignored completely. It'll be a busy night, he mused inwardly. No good would come of it all, and even Michael seemed hesitant in continuing when Zachery joined them.
Alas, Ethan didn't wait for a man to make a decision, pushing forward himself.
The barracks weren't too far off, around ten minutes by foot from Michael's office. Like many other buildings in the encampment, it was a repurposed one–it used to be a library before the Descent, with its shelves now ripped away to make room for hundreds of soldiers that usually slept in it. Tonight, however, it was reserved for 90 people, 90 hand-selected soldiers with the potential to make it as Awakened.
They didn't get to enter the barracks however, instead being halted on the stairs by a set of ten soldiers aiming guns at them. Michael immediately realised something was off, but he, James, and Sarah were immediately surrounded by other men in the group, guns aimed at their heads.
"Zack, what the hell are you doing?!" Michael roared. The man in question scoffed and instead focused on Ethan.
"He's the one, isn't he? The one who burned down the mall?" The man asked. "You've fallen, Mike. Making deals with terrorists."
"Zack, don't do this!" Michael said. "You don't know–"
"It's alright," Ethan spoke, his voice void of emotion. It was cold, unfeeling, beyond indifferent, as though there weren't ten guns pointing at his heart. "Zack, was it?"
"It is. Not that it matters to you. As you've committed acts of terrorism," the man pulled out a gun from the holster and aimed it at Ethan. "Only one fate awaits you."
"Zack, don't do this!" Michael's voice was a plea, but there was something odd to the tone. "You don't–" a gun was fired, however, and a bullet pierced straight through Ethan's gut. The latter, however, didn't flinch. His eyes remained focused on the man who pulled the trigger. The latter frowned, firing once again, this time straight through Ethan's lung. He glanced down at the falling droplets of blood, feeling the tingling sensation within. "Goddammit, Zack…" Michael mumbled in defeat.
"Cute," Ethan mumbled. A mere breath later, a flash of crimson blinded everyone for a moment. By the time they'd opened their eyes, a head was lopped off a falling body, both rolling back down the stairs. Nobody understood what happened–one moment, Zachery was standing tall, firing off shots at the strange man. The next… the Lieutenant General's body was severed from his head. "Knock 'em dead, Ron," Ethan turned toward Ronald who also appeared indifferent to the whole ordeal.
A body flashed forward like thunder, a crimson blade appearing in his hands. It was quick, faster than even a bullet, and despite the rain that they unleashed from their guns, few hit him, and those that did seemed to have no effect. One by one, soldiers fell, their heads decapitated.
Ronald, in the meantime, easily dealt with the men who had their guns on Michael, James, and Sarah. However, he didn't kill them. Rather, he broke their limbs for the most part to incapacitate them.
It wasn't a minute later that eleven corpses lay strewn across the stairs, blood rolling down like a tiny stream of morbidity. In their midst, Ethan wiped his face and used Hemomancy to wipe the blood from the rest of his body. There were quite a few bullet holes in his clothes, though the wounds had all been patched up if not already healed entirely.
"You didn't kill them?" Ethan asked as he went back down the stairs and noticed the writhing bulk.
"We can interrogate them," Ronald replied, looking away.
"... sure. So, guys," Ethan looked at them. "Here's the only question: do you want me to stab you in the brain or the heart? Three, two, one. Bzz. Too late." One by one, the remaining soldiers were killed off without mercy.
Michael, James, and Sarah stood unmoving, like statues. They were petrified, their minds fried beyond the capacity to function. Though the former two were very much aware that Ethan was strong, and were fairly certain he'd come out on top from the moment Zack pulled out the gun, it was not the strength itself that had shaken them so much as it was the pure lassitude with which the man killed. There was no hesitation, no remorse, no ounce of guilt. There was nothing but coldness, cosmic-like indifference to human life.
"I told you I'd deal with your Zachery problem," Ethan's demeanour changed abruptly. There was a smile on his face, a horridly innocent smile. Sarah cringed and keeled to the side, unable to hold her innards still any longer. Even James had to look away, while Michael wondered just what kind of a devil he invited into his ranks. "Do you think it'd be overkill to bring the bodies in and scare the shit out of the kids by saying that if they can't land a punch on me, I'll do the same thing to them?"
"... you shouldn't have done this," Michael said at last, his voice heavy with worry and weariness.
"Did what?" Ethan asked, his smile vanishing. "Defended myself?"
"Killed them," Michael responded in kind. "This was a perfect opportunity to arrest them and charge them with treason. It would have fixed all of the problems I was having. Instead, things just got a thousand times worse."
"Forgive me, dear General," Ethan said. "But as the kids these days say it, why should I care?"
"..."
"Besides, you're thinking too narrowly," he added. "People's attention is a whole lot like a box of chocolate."
"... what?"
"There for a moment, and then it gets gobbled up."
"... no, seriously, what?"
"Alright, that shitty reference fell apart. But the point still stands–you'll be the first man to conquer a Tunnel to the world. A hero. Do you think anyone will give a shit that your second-in-command got his head chopped off by some psychopath?"
"The government will," Michael said.
"Fuck the government," Ethan replied. "Who gives a shit what it thinks? You need to stop believing this to be an old world, Mike. The government doesn't own this city. You do. If they tell you to resign because of what happened, tell them to go suck a juicy-ass dick. What are they gonna do? Send an army here when the exact same thing will be happening across the entire nation, all the time? Now isn't the time to reestablish normalcy. Now it's time to establish yourself."
"... inspiring," Michael sighed. "But that isn't how things work, Ethan. No, they won't send an army after me. But you know what they will do? They'll stop shipping supplies. They'll stop sending us food, medicine, clothing, and everything we depend on to survive. Do you think we can somehow magically become self-sufficient overnight? That we can cull all our dependencies on imports?"
"..." it was Ethan's turn to frown. He did neglect that–in part because he never truly had to think on a scale of serving millions of people.
"I don't care that I will be deposed," Michael said. "I care that whoever replaces me will be given strict orders to bleed people dry because they housed a traitor. It won't be true, but it never is, anyway. They'll be bled dry, and every Awakened, soldier and civilian, worth a damn will be sent away to DC or some other city that did obey. You don't care–you can sustain yourself easily. As I could myself. But I don't live for my own sake. I never have. All my life has been spent in servitude–to the selfish ego in me, to the flag, to the higher causes, and to the people.
"Just because one event makes me a hero doesn't make a government forgetful. I can't leverage something that the entire world will doubt. Do you know why they will doubt it? Because they aren't aware of you. Other countries will send in their soldiers, and they will all die, and the stories will spread that we somehow faked the entire thing. How could this random-ass US city clear a Tunnel when the group composed of the country's most elite failed?"
"... I'm sorry," Ethan's words shocked everyone present–Ronald especially. He'd never heard Ethan utter them with any sincerity before. "I didn't realise the weight of it."
"... part of it is on me," Michael sighed. "I should have been far more explicit in stating that Zack is untouchable. Alas, what's done is done. Rather than crying over spilt milk, we may as well try and figure out the best way to handle this."
"I… may have an idea," Ronald said suddenly, prompting the other four to look at him. "What if he died… inside the Tunnel?"
"..." The four pairs of eyes lit up in realisation as each and every one of them tried to figure out how to best write that story. "We could dub him a national hero," Michael stroked his chin. "And though there'd likely be some suspicion, especially within his own ranks, they won't be able to raise all that much hell as the government doesn't like digging into a hero's death."
"Geez, I wonder why."
"However, to pull this off," Michael ignored Ethan's jab and continued. "We have to act immediately–depart before everyone else wakes up, and make it seem like he decided to join us on a whim after seeing the trials."
"... then that's what we do," Ethan nodded. "Get helis and planes and whatever the shit we'll be travelling in ready. Ronald and I need just a few hours with the kids and we'll find who can help us. We'll leave before the crack of dawn while you fabricate Zack's will of it all."
"... James and I will deal with that," Michael said. "Can Sarah stay with you to observe?" Though the words sounded rather innocent to the woman in question, the four men stared down at each other rather deeply. Ronald was confused as Ethan had never informed him of what Michael said and was wondering why Ethan seemed so unnaturally calm about the woman he seemed beyond excited to kill just a few weeks ago. The latter weighed the potential of it–on the surface, the woman didn't seem like the monster she appeared in the past. However, looks are often deceiving.
In fact, there was a small part of Ethan that still held some level of suspicion that this entire thing had been fabricated–that 'Zack' was used as a distraction to somehow shield Sarah, to provide her with a sheen of sympathy. It was absurd and painfully paranoid… but that was how his mind had functioned for years now. It saw threat everywhere and saw evil and greed behind every face. He even held suspicion that Ronald was planning on killing him as revenge for what happened to Tara.
It was exhausting, living with the voices that saw inhumanity in everything. But it was how he functioned–and how he survived.
"Fine," Ethan nodded. It wouldn't hurt, at least, to explore the possibility that Sarah was just a scapegoat, a public persona the world could hang the crimes against humanity on. "But she has to tell me her Class."
"Why–"
"It's called Mind Weeper," Sarah interrupted Michael. Though she didn't know what it was, she did pick up on there being something. "The only ability I have at the moment is to temporarily summon a creature called 'Weeper'. It can sneak into other people's bodies and force some effects on them, the most potent being truth-telling."
"What are the drawbacks?" Ethan probed further.
"... the Weeper only has 1 HP," Sarah responded. "It looks like this." She extended her right arm and opened up her palm. There, at the centre of it, a gaping, bleeding hole appeared whereupon a tiny, slimy creature crawled out. Ethan had never heard of the Class before and had never seen a creature summoned quite like that. There were plenty of Classes that sacrificed their blood, organs, and even lives to summon a monster, but it was always external. The parasite, it seemed, lived within her rather than being extradimensional.
"Alright," Ethan shrugged. It was still quite weak, with an obnoxiously obvious Mana profile. Though it might be able to sneak into others without them noticing, Ethan was too sensitive to Mana for that thing to go unnoticed. In fact, now that he knew its profile, he'd be able to immediately recognise that Sarah had summoned it so long as she was within two hundred feet of him. "Sounds useful. Where will we meet after?"
"Sarah will lead you to the field behind the military base where we've built a temporary aerodrome."
"Okay," Ethan nodded. "See you in a few hours, then. Good luck."
"Likewise." It would be a short night, Ethan garnered as he quickly helped them clean up the stairs and informed them they could shove the bodies into their Inventories. They'd keep them there until inside the Tunnel itself where Ethan would look for a decent opportunity to 'kill off the hero'. It was all… strange, and could have been avoided had he had the sense to listen to someone else. Even so… he couldn't. Neither his mind nor his body would let him. After all, he was simply that broken.