The Prophecy of Minecraftia

by MechanixAngel

As the world crumbles around Alex Glowstone, he begins a quest across Minecraftia to try and find survivors. But there are hints that he is something more; the one that could put an end to the destruction. Join Alex and his motley band of teens as the fight to their last breath among a world of ruin. But they may find out that their world was more than just a world after all...

36. My Only Fear is Fear

Hello once more, faithful readers.

As usual, thanks for reading TPoM. This chapter was kind of emotional for me because it completes the Earth story arc, and that really reminded me how close we are to the end of the story. I hope you guys are still enjoying the ride, I guess.

Alright then, so, let the story commence!

Chapter 36

My Only Fear is Fear

I don't like prison cells. The lack of space for you to move around discomforts me, let alone there is barely any option to stand at all. And just to make things worse, the walls are painted gray and white to make the room feel even more bland than it could have been before. Overall, the entire atmosphere just gets on my nerves more than I'd like.

The only good thing about my current situation was that I would be out soon. As soon as the Resistance had brought me back to Manchester with the President's daughter, they'd thrown me into this cell and told me to wait two days. General Walker would be able to talk to have a talk with me on that date, so they would supply me with food and such while I waited.

There was an analog clock above the iron door with the grated window, and most of the time I waited on the wooden bed and stared at it, waiting. Even the bed wasn't comfortable, serving better as a chair than something to sleep on. It was basically a wooden board that someone had thrown a blanket or two on. But there was nowhere else for me to rest, so I waited.

They'd thrown me in here on the 23rd, and according to the clock, fifty three hours had passed. It was about one o' clock in the world around me, and yet in this barred cell life felt timeless. That was a feeling that I found hard to enjoy, considering it was hell waiting.

Honestly, I had absolutely no idea what General Walker could possibly want with me. I was just another prisoner in my eyes, a soldier who had disobeyed his orders and should be sentenced to death; or even worse, life in a cell like this. I couldn't bear the thoughts that I was finished, and for the first time in years, a tear leaked out from my left eye.

I shook my head hurriedly, blinking to clear out the water. Maybe you're an imprisoned soldier, maybe you're as good as dead, but you're still a soldier. And soldiers don't freaking cry.

Bracing myself for another hour or so of waiting, I heard the jangle of keys. I perked up, ears sharp all of a sudden to try and hear if they were being inserted into my iron door. Trying not to look to hopeful in case a guard opened the door and looked at me stupidly, I urged myself not to move a single muscle, instead staring at the bars. They were thick, limiting my view of the hallway with about ten other prison cells just like the one I was sitting in. I swore that I could see movement on the other side of the bars.

Just when I was beginning to question myself, the door swung open to reveal a single guard with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder so that it hung against his chest, secured by a leather strap. There was a pistol holster on his belt too, along with what looked like concussion grenades and a small jar of pepper spray. I got the message not to try and mess with this guy. Like I had been planning to anyways.

"Sergeant Dylan Richter?" he said gruffly, staring at me from behind a visor hooked up to his combat helmet. I nodded, and stood up slowly from the bed. I was finally going to be out of this room, but there was the problem that I might not have that good of company.

He watched me closely, and I guessed that if I could see his eyes, they would be as narrow as humanly possible. "You're to follow me to a security checkpoint at close range. If you try anything, I'll blow your goddamn head off with minimal hesitation. Am I clear?" he continued, his mouth barely even opening with each word to show perfectly white teeth.

Once again, I nodded subtly, and he jerked his head behind him. "Sorry for the tough beginning. Kind of necessary, since I get a lot of rough prisoners, and I need to let them know the message," he explained, motioning for me to live the cell. I looked back in the cramped space that I had spent the last two days and shook off any hard feelings. It wasn't the cell's fault that I was trapped in there. What in the world was I thinking, blaming things on inanimate objects? Maybe I was a little crazy after all.

"No problem. Just don't blow my head off, OK?" I replied, and he chuckled a little bit. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad having to walk with a rough guard after all.

He led the way down the hallway, and I watched the metal walls as I passed by them just behind the guard. "Corporal Maxis," he informed me, and I assumed that was his name. Then again, what else could it have been when he said it in that situation? "I was a German before I joined the Resistance," he continued, turning to me briefly as he led me past the iron doors of the prison cells. "According to your files, you lived in the United States?"

"Yeah. A Resistance civilization camp in Rockford, Illinois," I confirmed, remembering the days of my childhood for the first time in a while. The Resistance had set up large areas for people not part of the armies to live. They had been like a community from before the war, with malls businesses and stuff like that. But everything was limited to the specific camps as to not give away the location of others if Anonymous decided to launch an attack on one. They were usually about the size of a small city, and they were about fifty of them spread across all of the countries that had joined the Resistance. Most of them were in Canada since the country was so large so that they would be harder to find. Often, people would join the military from the country they had come from, the US for me, and when they were done with their service, they would leave to start a family in a completely different country. Corporal Maxis' parents might be from Canada themselves. My dad was in fact from France originally, and had moved to Rockford after his service at age thirty seven. He died too early in my childhood for me to remember him, but I knew a lot my mom had explained to me about him.

"It seems that those days of innocence living in community camps are long gone, wouldn't you say?" Corporal Maxis mused to me, shaking his head quickly to rid his mind of the happy memories from before enlisting in the Resistance. He began up the stone steps up from the prison hallway and up toward the surface of the ground. The stairs were lit with flickering light bulbs, creating a gloomy atmosphere for the prisoners being led down the steps. I had barely even noticed the failing lights when I had been walking down these steps, too exhausted to care. Besides, my mind had been somewhere else during those moments.

"I don't know if we'll ever know days where that is the norm again. What a luxury it must have been to have lived before the attacks from Anonymous had started," I noted, thinking what my life might've been like had it all been like those years up to the point that I had turned seventeen years old. In truth, it was impossible, because those years had been influenced by the war as well. There was no safe haven in this world now, it seemed.

"Now, I hope that isn't how you always think, yes? Thinking of life to be a nightmare will influence it to become just that through your eyes," Maxis commented, opening the door up into the Law & Order building of the Resistance European HQ in Manchester. He turned back to me for a split second. "Now remember. Try anything, and I blow your goddamn head off. Even better, I get to do right in front of everybody, so I'll get a promotion," he warned.

I grinned at the prospect at that, even though the joke involved my brain to be crushed into a million different pieces. "I don't know if you want to do that. It would make an awfully hard mess to clean up," I retorted. Even though I couldn't see his eyes due to the visor, I was sure that they would've twinkled jokingly as he flashed a grin back at me.

He gave the door a thrust so that it would stay open for long enough that I could walk through it without having to tap it open. The bright light of the ground floor of the building momentarily blinded me, and I had to hold the back of my hand over my eyes to keep them in a shadow so that I could still see relatively well. The metal door slammed shut behind me, making me jump in my combat boots. I was still in my combat uniform, I just had absolutely no weapons on me. It was the first time that that was true of me in a long time.

It was only a few steps until we were at the door to the outside of the camp. The sky was overcast due to the normal England weather, always looking like it was about to start pouring rain. I remembered my first visit to Manchester, before I had been stationed in Sweden and later moved up the ranks to the Swedish Special Forces Squads. That didn't mean it didn't feel very familiar. Helicopters constantly flew in and out of the base, usually not five minutes passing without a fleet of them coming over the barbed wire fences or a convoy of vehicles passing through one of the six checkpoints. At the very center of all the action was an area nicknamed the hub, which was the intersection between four buildings, probably the most important ones in the entire facility. The Law & Order building, which I had just exited, was where the prison cells for criminals against the Resistance were held and interrogated. There was the Armory, where all the weapons were held and dealt out to the soldiers. Then there was the Comm Center, mostly underground, but with the most complex and high tech communication methods in the world. The wattage of the camp was about forty percent committed to just that building. And finally there was the Command, a building where the highest ranking officials made their public appearances to the soldiers and held private meetings. It was opposite from the Law & Order building, and since we were crossing the pavement in its direction, I assumed that that was where we were heading.

"You're practically a celebrity around here now," Corporal Maxis told me, speaking more to himself than me I'd guess. "Not exactly in a good way, but everyone knows who you are. There are probably people pointing and whispering about you right now."

"You talk about this camp like it's a middle school," I snorted, but I still checked my surroundings to make sure that no one was taking notice of me.

"Sometimes it can feel like it is. I wish I was a field operative like you, I feel like an idiot cooped up in Manchester for my entire life. There's no glory to escorting prisoners around the camp instead of accomplishing actual objectives out there," Maxis sighed.

The comment caused me to think about my three years or so out in the field. It was a rough life than you could ever expect countering living in Manchester. And yes, the thrill and adrenaline ran a lot higher when you had a gun in hand, but if you had a hot weapon that usually meant that your enemies were in the exact same situation. Death could happen at any second just because of the amount of enemies gripping their own guns and aiming at you.

Then again, I was best off just staying quiet and not judging this guy's opinion. I had to remember that I was still the guy unarmed tagging along with a man with an assault rifle in hand. It would be best for me to just agree with him and not give him a reason to get ticked at me, even if I had started out well and with him trusting me to some extent.

As we reached the doors of the Command, I began to feel a little nervous. There were many punishments that could possibly be in order for me, and they began to run through my head at breakneck speed as I began feeling apprehensive. The Command was a very large building, and although the layout was very simple, it felt like a maze to me in my nerve-wracked state.

"You're to meet with General Walker in the debriefing room on the third floor. I'll escort you there," Corporal Maxis informed me, glancing down at his notes to make sure that he got all of the information correct. "Take the stairs on the left side of the room. That way will get us to the debriefing room as fast as possible. And keep in mind that you're still a prisoner."

I nodded shortly, recognizing the fact that I was indeed still the bad guy in our situation. I walked to Corporal Maxis' right as he led the way across the polished floors toward a door that led into the stairway. There were two armed guards on either side of the door, both of them carrying submachine guns. Maxis held a small identification card up to one of them, and the guard nodded in confirmation that we could pass through, pushing open the door to the stairwell for us. I passed through first, with Maxis walking behind me so that he had a good view of me.

The stone stairs seemed very threatening and dull, as if they were daring me to trip over one of them and fall pathetically down the road I had come. I thought over what Corporal Maxis had said about the meeting that I was headed to. He had called it debriefing, which meant that I would that most likely I would be asked to confirm what had happened in my previous field action and assigned to a new task. That couldn't have been the word he had meant to use, right?

On the third floor of the stairs was a door that would lead us into the practical part of the third floor, excluding the break in the stairs that I was standing on at the moment. Once again, Maxis pulled ahead of me and opened the door. There were two armed guards here as well, in very much the same situation to make sure that no one who was not supposed to be in the Command was moving around floor to floor. I followed Maxis through the doorway and tailed him down a hallway. At the very end of the wooden hallway was a door.

"General Walker should be waiting for you in there. Serve the Resistance well, Sergeant," Corporal Maxis told me, nodding as I stepped up to the door labeled 'Debriefing'. Why was he saluting me if I was basically a criminal. Oh, yeah, I thought. Technically I outranked him in the military. That couldn't be true anymore, could it? After all, at this point all I wanted to do was go to some community camp and settle down there. I didn't want to fight anymore, and I didn't want to be thrown in a prison. The latter was most likely my fate, so I would have my title removed from my name and just become Dylan Richter.

"Thanks. I hope that someday you're able to fight in the field, if that's truly what you want," I saluted Corporal Maxis, thrusting my hand from my forehead in the old United States military tradition. He grinned a little bit and walked back in the other direction, and I turned back to the door in front of me. All of the apprehension that had been riddling at me made a sudden return, and I took a deep breath. My terrible fate would be decided here.

I twisted the door knob and entered the room. There was a large table in the center, a round table with six seats. Seated at them were General Walker and four men dressed in Navy SEAL uniforms, with one of the seats empty. I assumed that it was for me. Besides the table, there was a large screen with a graphic of the territories of Europe and who currently had control of them between the Resistance and Anonymous.

"Welcome back to Manchester, Sergeant Richter. Please, take a seat here. We have a lot to discuss involving your future," General Walker greeted me from her seat. The empty seat was between her and one of the SEALs, and I made my way over to it. All of the SEAL operatives had their eyes fixed on me, daring to try anything that a criminal would do. I didn't understand that, after all, all I had done was leave that camp and accomplish objectives that helped the Resistance in huge impacts that they wouldn't have been able to accomplish themselves.

The seat was wooden with metal legs, not the most comfortable thing in the world but definitely sturdy enough that it served its purpose well. I slid down into it with ease, surveying the other people at the table. Every eye was locked on me as I sat there, making me feel a little bit uneasy. "General Walker, you called for me to meet you here?" I heard myself say.

The woman clicked pen against the table so that the tip was sticking out of it, and she began to write on a piece of notebook paper. "As you know, Sergeant Richter, you committed a crime against the Resistance. You deserted the camp that you were supposed to be located at and used military equipment to accomplish unauthorized tasks. Normally these crimes would render very severe punishments," she began, not looking up from her paper as she began drawing some kind of diagram. Normally? Was I somehow free from punishments?

"However, it has come to my attention that the nature of the work you did in the field while on desertion was quite helpful to the cause of the Resistance. Although your mission in Stockholm was no more than a massacre of Anonymous soldiers to us, it clearly has something to do with your relationship with Markus Persson. Dylan, let me get this straight," she continued, stopping from drawing on the notebook paper to look back up at me. "You can't keep up these relations with Markus Persson. It is purely a fluke, he is a criminal to the entire Resistance and Anonymous as well. To relate to him yourself should be a crime, but I'm once again giving you a pass for reasons I'll explain in a second. But anything, any kind of contact or any visiting Stockholm without permission from the Resistance, it will be considered as bad as treason in our book. Is this clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," I replied, although I knew it would be impossible for me to stop working with Notch. He would always be under my skin, and anyways, what about the folder that he had given me? The Resistance guards that had captured me hadn't considered it a weapon, so it had been left in my backpack. It was there right now. But I couldn't open it quite yet. Notch had said that there was a time that I would have to open it, and only then. I knew it wasn't that time yet, so for now it would just have to lay at rest in my backpack.

She leaned in closer to me. "Just to make sure I'm clear. I'm taking a lot of shit off your record so that you can still work with us. If you screw anything up, then you're jailed for life." I wasn't sure what was more threatening, the harsh words that Walker was speaking to me or the death stares that I was attracting from the Navy SEAL onlooker. There was nowhere to turn if I wanted to not be scared out of my body by threats.

"Rescuing the President's daughter certainly helped you a lot. She sends you her thanks from a community camp in Amsterdam. The political leaders will have to stay there for a while until the heat dies down surrounding them. That plane crash certainly made things interesting," General Walker mused, going back to the diagram she was drawing. "Now, to brief you on current events. As you can see from the chart being projected on the screen in front of you, we're making absolutely no progress in making up any territory in Europe except for Spain. Portugal is still in Anonymous hands, and so is the majority of Spain, but we appear to be pushing back their front lines. If we can cut off the supply routes completely, then it is only a matter of time before Portugal and the rest of Spain fall.

"Germany and Switzerland are about as far as we can get when you want battlegrounds controlled by us. The Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, and Poland are all up for grabs, and everything in Europe east of that is Anonymous controlled. We have Norway and Denmark, Anonymous has Finland, and obviously Sweden is the biggest battleground in the Western Hemisphere right now. You probably know that first hand, but just a quick update."

"What we are focusing on today, however is Spain. Intelligence shows that there will be a meeting in a facility a couple miles north of Madrid, deep in enemy territory. This isn't just any meeting, though. This goes right up there with Operation Tombstone from 2137. Back then, there was a meeting of all the Anonymous leaders; political, society, and military in Slovakia. A French branch of Air Force operatives went in for a typical bag and drag with the people involved so that if the mission was successful, the war would practically be in our hands. Anonymous would have no leaders, no government, and basically no system. A couple easy invasions later, and this war would be over. Obviously, the bag and tag operation was unsuccessful, and so here we are eighty five years later in the same predicament.

"There's no way that we could possibly call in an airstrike or invade in order to assault the compound, it's too far away from our front lines. However, we have a loophole, and it's all thanks to Anonymous relations with the Spanish government before the war actually started. One of the Spain's government leaders was informed of the attacks months before they actually happened thanks to him actually being part of the terrorist group. He passes a bill for catacombs under the entire country that could be used as a fallout shelter because of the cold war between the United States, the European Union, and China at the time, and boom. Anonymous has a way of moving troops around the country for immediate travel to different locations without us ever knowing. However, we found out about it only a couple years after the war started, and they shut down the operation. Many of the tunnels have flooded or caved in, but there are many still operational. And since we have the entrance of one of them in Barcelona that hasn't caved in, we have a direct approach into Madrid for you. That is, if you're in," General Walker explained, further convincing me that this speech was very much planned.

"What are my other options?" I asked, which I knew was a very stupid option in itself.

"Well, if you choose not to do this, you have the options of either execution or life in a military prison. I'm assuming that I already know what you want to do, yes?" she replied.

"So, the tunnels under Spain's cities," I said, changing the subject stupidly back to the apparent mission debriefing, and now briefing.

"Yes, you'll enter with four SEAL teams as backup from Barcelona. Radios still work down there, so we'll be able to guide you from above. Hopefully you're not afraid of the dark. Once you're out of the catacombs, it's only a short walk to the facility from there. There are trees all around it, so you'll take station in one of those. When the convoy arrives, wait for all of them to pass except for the last one, and board it to sneak into facility. Infiltrate the meeting, keep the leaders pinned down and your close surroundings clear of enemies, and call in the four SEAL teams. These guys in here are the leaders of them, and they have five guys in each group. So not only do you have twenty men's worth of backup, but we'll fly in an AC130 for you guys. It'll be easy as long as you don't get killed on your way in," General Walker explained, finally finishing the diagram that she had been drawing. She slid the sheet of paper over to me, and I stopped it from sliding off the table. It was a rough diagram of the facility, with the building in the center surrounded by a circle of open fields. There were forests surrounding that with just one checkpoint entrance to the east. It was very simple, although it would be hard to infiltrate with just one way in or out. Unless I learned to fly, which wasn't exactly likely.

"So I just call in the SEAL teams once I've got the Anonymous leaders pinned down?" I confirmed with General Walker, and she nodded.

"Sergeant Richter, are you sure you'll be able to go through with all of this? I don't know if you're quite ready myself, considering all of this Notch stuff going on inside your head," she continued, her face full of concern.

"I'm not afraid of going into battle. It's just a mental state of mind, after all," I assured her, standing from my wooden seat to begin prepping to go into action. "Now, can I have my guns back?"

General Walker sighed from her seat at the table. "Are you sure?"

The statement made me grin. "My only fear is fear, after all."

The general rolled her eyes, turning back to the four SEAL team leaders. "Alright men, get suited up. This is going to be the biggest mission of your career."

TPoM

"Greyhound, are you set in position? Convoy is driving toward you right now, ETA thirty seconds," my radio sounded, a broadcast from the overhead AC130. It was hidden by the clouds that covered the sky in sheets of white, making it impossible for it to be detected by the Anonymous spotters. The ground itself was foggy and damp, with a heavy mist so that walking felt like you were moving through rain although nothing was actually falling from the sky.

"Affirmative, Hawk, I am set in position," I responded, and clicked the button on the radio again to cut my speaking. I rested on a tree branch about fifteen feet off of the ground in the heavy underbrush near the security checkpoint that led into the facility, where I had a view of the guarded entrance through the greenery. There were two armed guards, one that stood on my side of the road on the left, and another that stood in the middle. I already had it planned out; once all of the convoy had passed through except for the last one, I would jump down and take out the guard on my side of the road. Once the other guard checked out the vehicle to make sure it was clear, I would take him out and get in the back cabin of it. According to the intelligence we had received, the back vehicle's cabin was merely for supplies, so I would be safe in there.

The mission was codenamed Operation Doghouse, a reminder to how the facility had only one way in and one way out, and you were really picking a fight if you went into the enemy's doghouse. Unfortunately, that was exactly what I would be doing.

It was about three o' clock in the afternoon on the day after the meeting I had attended in Manchester, so it would have been hot out had it not been for the overcast sky. June 26th was supposed the be a very hot day for Spain, but instead it was in the low 70s and about to start a downpour at any second now. For the assignment, all radio transmissions would address me as Greyhound, Hawk was the AC130 high up in the sky, and the SEAL teams were nothing more than Squads Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta. At the moment, they were waiting two hundred yards out from my position, still in the trees just off of the road. All I had to do once I was in the room with the Anonymous leaders was just press a button on my radio and say "Hudson." I had chosen the code word to be that in memory of the soldier that had gone away from the camps in Sweden with me, whose body rested somewhere in the ruins of the church tower that had blown up during our mission to rescue the President's daughter.

The cars reached the security checkpoint right on time. The first two were armored trucks with cabins in the back which were filled with people. The third one held the executives in an armored limo. The last two cars were identical to the first two, but the last one held cargo instead of people. Ammunition, weapons, all kinds of stuff like that.

The guard that was checking the vehicles looked in the back first, and then to the front to wave in the driver of the car. There were about thirty seconds between the time that each car was permitted to enter the facility, the time that the guard was able to search the cars to make sure that nothing illegal was permitted to enter the facility. The guard on the side of the road was leaning against a tree a couple feet behind the car, smoking a cigarette with his gun leaning against his side. I took my Five Seven out from my pocket, a gun that would make the kills as quick and silent as a knife to the throat. That was too gory for me, though.

From my pocket I pulled out a silencer barrel and screwed it on to the end of the pistol. The attachment would reduce the muzzle flash of the weapon and make it as close to silent as a gun could possibly be. Next, I slipped down from my branch to the ground of the underbrush, with my pistol at my side. The limo was passing at this point, and the inspector guard had moved onto the second to last vehicle. At this point, I was only a couple of a feet behind the guard that was smoking on the side of the road, and I aimed down the iron sights of my Five Seven at the back of his head. As soon as the last car moved up to the line of the security checkpoint, I squeezed the trigger.

I had always had deadly accuracy, and this bullet hit the guard right in the back of the skull. I grabbed the back of his combat suit quickly and threw him back into the underbrush, and thankfully the other guard didn't notice. He was giving the thumbs up to the car's driver now, and I sprinted across the road out of his sights toward the back of the truck as it began to pull away. The guard saw me at the last second, and I fired three deadly bullets into his chest. At least one of them hit him in the chest, and he was knocked backward into the shallowest leaves. Unless you looked closely enough, both bodies were hidden in the leaves.

The bodies weren't my problem anymore anyways, and I scrambled into the cabin of the truck. The leather flaps that hid the inside were pushed away easily, and I sat down on a wooden box of ammunition. There were no windows into the driver's area, so I was perfectly safe for the moment. I took out the magazine that was in my Five Seven and reloaded it with a fresh one, just to be safe. I couldn't walk into a facility of enemies with just four bullets in my gun.

The armored car moved along with minimal bumping around, and I took out my radio from its holster on my belt. "I'm en route aboard the convoy now," I spoke into it, met by a reply of static.

"That's confirmed, Greyhound. Be aware, the convoy is pulling into the parking garage below the facility. Heavy security down there, you're going to have to improvise if you want to stay undetected. We're counting on you," Hawk voiced into me, and I debated. The easiest thing would be to take out the UMP45 that was strapped over my back and unleash hell, but that would end up having my targets scattered and possibly killed. What I had to do was disguise myself as an Anonymous guard somehow and get through the facility towards the meeting while keeping that persona. The only way to do that was to steal a uniform.

"Hawk, do you know where clothing supplies in the facility are?" I radioed in.

There was more static until I got my long awaited answer from the AC130 high above me. "Looks like you're in luck, Greyhound. There are fresh uniforms for guards being transported on the truck you're on right now. Try to get them on quickly," Hawk contacted me. I scoured the boxes until I found the one marked 'Uniforms'. I ripped off the wooden planks that were nailed to the top of the crate and picked up one of the suits. It was a combat uniform, standard Anonymous brand with black textiles and camouflage highlights in some corners.

The car dipped downward as it entered the parking garage under the facility, and whipped my UMP45 around so that it was in my hands. This way, I looked like an actual guard. Then, I replaced the wooden planks on top of the crate I had busted open the best I could. There was no way that I would be able to completely reattach it, but since it was near the back of the car's supplies, it would be awhile before the box was discovered to be vandalized.

The armored car stopped finally, and I pushed aside the leather flaps and hopped down to the pavement. The garage was filled with about thirty trucks identical to the one I had just ridden into the facility on. I began to feel a little bit uncomfortable, since I was completely surrounded by the enemy as they went on their patrols around the facility. If I was stopped and an expert tried to inspect my weapon, they would know that it was a model only the Resistance used, and I would be completely exposed.

I could see a group of about five armed guards surrounding the six executives that would be attending the meeting. The dressed like high ranking officials, that was true. The group of people made their way toward an elevator. I didn't want to appear to be scouting them or anything, so I continued on toward a series of stairs. The amount of people in the room was astronomical, and I had to weave my way in and out of the various workers in order to make my way towards the staircase. My Five Seven was once more hidden from sight in its holster, with the silencer barrel still screwed to the front of it.

The meeting was due to start in just about five minutes, so I took my time on the stairs. The stream of people on the stairs was minimal, not what I had expected at all. I clicked on the button on my radio while I was on an area of the stairs by myself and spoke to Hawk up in the sky. "Making alternative route to the meeting room other than the elevators as I speak. What floor is the meeting on again?" I whispered into it, as to not attract attention.

As I walked, I made sure that the safety of my UMP45 was on, and then I got an answer from Hawk. "Third floor, south side of the building. Remember to call in the SEALs when you're all set," the voice told me through heavy static. "Good luck, Greyhound."

At the top of the staircase was the ground floor, where more people bustled around as they made their ways to different assigned posts. I began walking toward the next staircase, which was on the south side of the building and would lead me just outside of the meeting. It was impossible to even hear myself think, as the many people talking about operations and things that needed to be carried out drowned out anything else my ears could register. I checked my watch once more. Two minutes until the meeting began.

Once I reached the bottom of the next staircase, I began my way up toward the third floor. This staircase was a spiral one that went through the floors, with the entrances to each floor open and showing views of corridors that led to armories, communication rooms, interrogation rooms, and meeting rooms. Finally, I reached the third floor, and I paused at the entrance to the corridor my objective was located in. My watch read 3:21, indicating the meeting had started one minute ago. The door was locked into the room, but there was another way to get in. Much like an interrogation room, the meeting was being watched and recorded from a window above the floor in another room, with one way glass. Maybe the glass was bulletproof, but I had come prepared for anything.

I went to the door to the left of the meeting and opened it, closing it quickly so that no one in the corridors knew of my presence. There were two guards in this room, and I whipped out my Five Seven and shot them both in the chests. The broadcast table had a blinking red light along with a television monitor that showed the Anonymous leaders in the room below me in the same view I could see through the darkened window. I flipped a switch to shut down the recording of the meeting, and I got out a small block of C4 from my pack of gear strapped to my back and fixed it against the bottom of the window. The switch to activate the explosive rested in my hand, and I clicked the button of my radio briefly. All that needed to be spoken was one word. "Hudson."

Quickly, my radio began sounding voices other than that of Hawk. The pilot of the AC130 had patched me through to the leaders of the SEAL squads and the Overlord operator of the Comm Center back in Manchester. "SEAL squads, you are cleared to commence your assault on target Doghouse, Greyhound awaiting arrival in the meeting room on floor three." There was much more to the chatter, and it seemed like all of the Resistance taking part in the operation were patched through to me. I took a deep breath and flicked the switch of the explosive button.

The darkened window in front of me shattered into pieces in a great fireball, and I vaulted over the bottom of the window and landed on my feet. The floor was littered with broken glass, and I held up my UMP45. "No one even breathes unless I give you permission!" I shouted, flicking the sights of the submachine gun at all of them to show that I honestly did not care for their safety. The truth was that I didn't, after all, they were the leaders of the enemy.

There was no talking from the Anonymous leaders, and I kept the sights of my gun trained on them as I went over to the door of the room and locked it. Finally, a clear voice came through my radio in static. "Greyhound, proceeding with missile launch on coordinates Three Romeo Seven Two Nine. Are you secure in target room safely?" Hawk radioed through.

"You're clear, Hawk. Locking down, send in the missiles and then the SEAL teams."

"Roger that," my radio buzzed, and then cut off the static it had been making. I crouched down against the wall, with all of the Anonymous leaders sitting in their chairs around the table. I didn't know any of them, we hadn't had time for me to prep that, but there were six of them. I did know that there had to be that many. But they better have been sitting down. It was about to get a little bit bumpy.

An explosion rocked the building from far away, shaking the chairs and causing the shattered glass on the ground to rattle. "Jesus Christ!" one of the Anonymous men exclaimed, resting his head against the table to try and limit the noise in his head. Alarms went off around the building, and we could hear them from outside the door. Over the course of a minute, three more explosions rattled the structure. For all I knew, it was old enough to come down at any second with all of the pressure that we were putting on it.

There were no footsteps from outside our room now, just alarms faintly in the distance. The systems must have been destroyed, so only a couple of them around the building were actually alerting Anonymous of the pending attack. The men inside the room with me were silent, all debating what they could possibly do to try and save themselves. The truth was, as long as I was in the room with them, there was no way out.

I stood again, stretching my legs. My combat boots crunched against the broken glass on the floor with every step, creating a sound that made the room eerily not quiet anymore. "Greyhound, this is SEAL Team Alpha Captain Harper speaking, we are advancing into the parking garage right now. We'll reach your position at some point in the next five minutes. Just hold on, there's limited resistance from Anonymous in the building because of the AC130 airstrike," my radio spoke.

"That's confirmed, I'm locked down with the Anonymous leaders in the target room. Awaiting your arrival. Try to make it quick, though, I don't like sitting in the middle of a fight with minimum defense available," I replied, lifting my thumb from the button of the radio and turning back to the group. The six people attending the meeting were the men in charge of every part of Anonymous' life; the Resource director, the Food director, the Weaponry director, the Civilization director, the Military director, and the Pres. If one of them wasn't here and was being substituted by an assistant or something because they couldn't make it to the meeting, then the war would push on. If that was the case, we were screwed.

Once again, sound ceased to be nothing except for the blaring alarms throughout the facility, and with nothing else to do, I leaned against the wall in my Anonymous uniform. It felt weird to be in this suit, so I began to take off the extra clothing until I was in my standard Resistance combat suit. I felt more natural that way, and I threw aside the disguise I had been using like it was just a piece of garbage. Then again, that was all it was when it came to if I cared at this point or not.

The first gunshot that was audible to me came around three minutes after Captain Harper had contacted me, a burst of automatic bullets down the corridor outside. I readied my UMP45 in case one of the Anonymous survivors tried to use the meeting room that I was camping out in as some sort of cover from the SEAL teams that were making their way through the facility to aid me. It wasn't a matter of fear, just self-protection. I wasn't afraid, of course not. After all, what I had said to General Walker had been true; my only fear was that fear itself would somehow find a way to creep under my skin, because that would render me helpless.

The gunshots grew increasingly closer until they ceased completely. There were footsteps directly outside of the door, and it sounded like quite a few pairs of feet. My radio buzzed in once more from my belt attached to my waist. I lifted it off of the leather to hear the next message. "Greyhound, this is Captain Harper speaking once more, three of the SEAL teams are waiting outside the target room, hold your fire to incoming soldiers."

I clicked the button again. "Roger that, Captain Harper, you are clear to move into the target room, I have it locked down with all HVIs unharmed."

There was some shouting from outside the door, and it busted open in front of me all of a sudden. It appeared that the man in front, a man with a radio clipped to his belt, had actually kicked down the metal door with surprising strength. "Secure the High Value Individuals, we're moving out as soon as we have control of each and every one of them," he ordered his troops, who filtered in around him with SEAL uniforms on and circled the conference table in the middle of the room to secure the area. The man who had commanded the group stepped up to me. "Good to see that you're still alive, Greyhound."

"Captain Harper?" I questioned, and he nodded faintly. I gripped his palm in a firm handshake, and I proceeded with my questions. "Where is the other SEAL team if they aren't up here with us?"

"They've secured the combat cars down in the parking garage which will be used for our own exfiltration. Team Delta is guarding the four trucks they captured as we speak," he informed me, lifting his own gun up from its leather strap that held it around his shoulder.

It didn't take longer than a minute for the highly skilled SEAL operatives to handcuff all of the Anonymous leaders and get them standing with gun barrel pressing against the smalls of their backs. "Alright then, let's move down to the parking garage. The sooner we get out of this hellhole, the better," Captain Harper shouted, and six of the SEAL squad members began to lead the Anonymous leaders out of the room. The ten others in the group, including me, took various position surrounding the human convoy as we began our way down the hallway.

Our footsteps echoed along the dark hallways, the only lights that remained on amid the missile strikes constantly flickering. There were smile sparks of fire that crackled on various spots of the walls, and I led the way with Captain Harper at my side at point. I heard a gunshot in the distance, far away from any of us. The group halted, but it apparently hadn't been directed at us. So instead, we resumed at our pace until we reached the stairway that the SEAL teams had already cleared at the opposite end of the corridor from which I had come through.

The staircase was cracked, with various sparks of fire much like those that we had seen up on the third floor corridor walls. This staircase led all the way down to the parking garage, and I led the way as we crossed the pavement toward Team Delta across the aisle by the four armored cars. Once we reached them, we had the Anonymous leaders board them with Resistance militants guarding each of them to make sure that they didn't try anything.

"Hawk, we are prepared to begin our exfiltration from the parking garage," I spoke into my radio as I boarded the passenger seat in the front of one of the armored cars as Captain Harper sat in the driver's seat. Harper started the engine, causing the machine to begin to rumble as the pistons began to turn.

"Greyhound, you are all clear for evacuation, I'll light up the building as soon as you're clear of the area. Minimum casualties throughout the operation, I hope?"

"Absolutely none, except for cuts and bruises. We're leaving right now."

The convoy of four armored cars began their way out of the parking garage past debris. I kept my UMP45 loaded just in case we ran into any patrols that had survived along the path out of the facility. But as we broke into the sunlight, there appeared to be none. As soon as our convoy got out of minimum range of the facility, a got a message on my radio. "Lighting them up in three, two, one…"

I stuck my head out the window, and past the other cars in the convoy behind ours, I say a heavy rain of missiles and bullets penetrate the clouds that hung over the facility and crash into the building. Fire leapt up from the already damaged building, and I began laughing. It got to the point where I shouted in happiness. Because according to our plan, what we had just done should have hands down ended the entire war, the one that had now lasted over two hundred years. It was unbelievable how wrong I could have possibly been.

And so concludes the Earth story arc in TPoM, which will end up being revisited in the epilogue. But for all of you that don't like these, Merry Christmas! And to exb756, there might not have been many explosions, but there were very powerful words. So hopefully that was a grand exit for Sergeant Richter.

How was Sergeant Richter wrong? How will the Imperial Battalion find the way to the End using the Eyes of Ender? And how will the story finally conclude? We're nearing the end now, so find all of your answers next time, only in the Prophecy of Minecraftia!