September 15th, 2222. Silas, Dana, Carl and Garcia spent a lot of time planning out how to wrangle the last groups of Hunters working with the cartel. They moved extremely quickly and efficiently. Under Silas' command, they were able to take many of the leaders of the Hunters by surprise and then swiftly deal with their crews. They had the Hunters kept locked in another, larger safe house that could be locked from the outside. There, they also kept the CIA agent who was barely still alive. Garcia had lost hope of her getting out of this mission alive, but after seeing Silas and his crew doing their work, she felt impressed and hopeful. Later that day, the team was back outside of the city of Ouro Preto. They left the area for a while to detail the next steps of their plan, and then commence the operation to finally bust the cartel. However, suddenly some alarms started to sound from within the city. Old alarms that didn't sound familiar to anybody. People all over were coming out of houses inside of Ouro Preto. Meanwhile, Silas and his team looked around in confusion. "What the hell is going on?" Dana asks.
"I don't know what this is." Garcia says. "I haven't heard this alarm before."
"Is it some sort of natural disaster alarm?" Dana asks.
"Do you see a natural disaster?" Garcia scoffs.
Suddenly, a loud whistle rapidly gets louder as some sort of metal and glowing object shoots down from the sky, at speeds faster than Mach 2. Immediately as the glowing object slams into the ground, it was like all of the world went on mute for a few very long seconds as the city of Ouro Preto was vaporized in a pillar of light. Without being able to hear anything, it took Silas a while to realize he had been thrown onto his back regardless of being really far from the explosive force. Large chunks of debris started falling from the sky of cars and trees and Silas' hearing slowly came back with an intense and painful ringing. As he heard the ringing, all he could do was rolling over and writhe in pain as he puts a finger in each ear and tries to gently soothe the pain. When he inspects his ear, he sees a little bit of blood on his fingers from his ears. Silas tries to stand but stumbles as he realizes he's really dizzied. After about a minute, some of Silas' hearing comes back as the ringing slowly quiets down. He gets up and leans against Garcia's truck as he sees the others still stumbling and trying to get up. Silas helps Garcia as Carl picks Dana up on his shoulder and the two stumble to reach the car as well. "What the hell happened!?" Silas asks.
"What!?" Garcia asks as she rubs her ears and then panics as she sees blood.
"What was that!?" Carl asks.
"I dunno!" Garcia yells.
The four of them turn to look at the pillar again and see that it's gone but what looks like a crater now stands where Ouro Preto used to be. The four look in awe at first, then Silas panics as he realizes everyone in the whole city just died. "No!" Silas says as he comes to his senses finally. "Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait! No! No! No!"
"They're all gone..." Garcia says as she comes to her senses. Garcia drops to her knees as Silas gets visibly angry.
"Silas..." Dana says as she uses the truck to keep herself up as she walks towards Silas.
"The cartel we were supposed to apprehend, all of those Hunters, that CIA agent, and all of those poor innocent people... They're all gone!" Silas growls.
"Silas, it isn't your fault..." Dana says.
"Todo o meu povo..." Garcia says as she starts to cry.
"Carl... what do I do?" Dana asks as she looks back at Carl with tears forming in her eyes.
Carl looks around at everyone, seeing his whole team demoralized within just mere moments of feeling prepped and ready to take on the world. Carl looks around a few times before he simply grabs Dana and pulls her in for a hug and says "What can we do but move on?"
"But... we failed and Silas..." Dana says as she starts to cry. "You know how he is; he's going to blame himself for all of those people."
"We can't always win, Dana." Carl says. "He just needs some time. Garcia needs some time too. We just need to be here for them after they get it all out of their system."
"Two successful operations." Burke says over the radio to Cornell. "Dyrnwyn is a success, and a wrench has been thrown in their gears."
"I must say that I am disappointed but not surprised to hear of Skell's betrayal." Cornell says. "But the fool really thought he'd make a difference simply by defying orders? What a joke. Slowly, we'll peel away the armor of Omnia and find where The Six Guns are hiding. Two birds with one stone."
"Should we go ahead and give our agent the news?" Burke asks.
"No, give it just a little bit of time." Cornell replies. "Not so much that it seems like we purposely waited to tell her, but just enough to give it a little impact. A little dramatic touch is all we need. This will help sabotage the efforts those Mages are putting into place to keep their eyes on us. If nothing else, we can use this time to go over further production of more Dyrnwyn canisters. I'll get more details on the weapon test deployed on Brazil soon."
The next day, September 16th, 2222; Silas and the rest returned to Omnia defeated. "We heard the news." Haru says as the four of them show up, completely demoralized. "Look, there was nothing you could do to stop something of that scale. I don't even know how something like that was built. But we have the obvious suspects."
"Why would someone kill all of those innocent people?" Silas asks in a dry and tired voice.
"We don't know." Holly says. "We've sent investigators to look into this matter. As for now, all we can do is speculate. You four need to go get some rest."
As the four of them leave, Jade could see something on Silas' face that she somehow didn't expect to see. She saw a mix of emotions that somehow, she thought he was incapable of. Sadness, defeat, misery, depression. Most all of, what she saw on their faces were humanity. Suddenly, she felt guilty. Guilty for them suffering but also guilt for thinking of them as things rather than people. For a moment, she felt she could relate to the helpless feeling they were going through. After watching the four of them disappear out of sight, Jade asks "I know what you're thinking..."
"Hm?" Holly asks.
"You're thinking America did this, aren't you?" Jade asks, still not taking her gaze off of the hallway Silas disappeared from. "It was... my country who did all of that. Wasn't it?"
"Jade..." Haru says. "You've been here for a few days, so I know you understand we're not here to brainwash you. We aren't sure of the causes for all of this and can only merely speculate, so we don't-"
"But that's what you think, isn't it?" Jade asks as she looks Holly and Haru sternly in the eyes. "I think... while I've been trying to put it out of mind, I think I've always known what they were capable of. I mean... all those years ago when the Black Skies Incident ended, I read that book too. Library//Asylum... the book Siran Mahina made about the restoral period and what happened during the Naris Catastrophe. It's not that I trusted them, I just... didn't want to think I'm part of the problem."
"Part of the problem is a choice you make and a point of view." Holly says abruptly. "In some way, all of us here now are part of the problem. Do you choose to be part of that problem?" Jade paused for a moment as she thinks. "He's a nice kid, you know." Holly says after a short wait.
"Whu-huh?" Jade asks, seemingly embarrassed. "What do you mean?"
"Silas... he's a nice kid." Holly replies. "Clever and smart too. You may have thought that being a laibah makes him less human... but to be honest... I'd even say the kid has a better head on his shoulders than even me. If you were scared that he would be inhumane by any means simply because he's different, I would like to advise you to put those worries aside."
"Yeah..." Jade says as she thinks. "Then... what about America? What are the chances it was them who did that bombing in Brazil?"
"Honestly..." Haru says with a short pause. "Very likely. We didn't want to feed you this information because it would seem hostile towards you. But we did find the CIA involved with the rogue Hunters and cartel before the bombing. At this moment, we believe America is the only country in the whole world to have something to gain from all of that evidence vanishing like that. But again, that is only speculation. There could be an ally involved in this. Don't take that information to heart."
"Yeah..." Jade says, thinking deeply to herself.