Chapter 16

Liar Liar Liar Liar Liar Liar!

Daddy is a stinky liar! All the adults were!

My sister! My little sister! You took her! You smiled as mommy cried, as I cried!

You smiled because you were happy at our tears! You liked seeing us cry!

And you liked making sis cry too!

I told mommy that I wouldn't go anywhere!

But you!

I tried everything to get sis back! To make mommy smile again!

The blue people! The people in the news! All of them, you bullied to keep quiet!

Even when Father Jon told me to help, you drove him away!

You meanie!

But Father Jon was right.

If I prayed, maybe God would tell me where sis was.

Then I would take her back.

And mommy would smile again!

And I prayed.

And prayed.

And prayed until my knees were raw.

Then mommy died.

You didn't cry! You smiled that stupid, stupid smile of yours!

And I cried.

And I prayed.

Then God answered my prayers.

Fuck, Fuck! How could I not have noticed! Of course, when it floods Noah is nowhere close with the boat! "Core YSN, transmitting requested data" Ark helpfully warned me as I received it. And I felt my stomach drop at the number of common things between the cases. All had been hailed as prodigies, even as soon as age five. Their abilities would have made them into the next great inventors or businessmen of this era. No that it would matter 'cause of the war but still. These kids deserved better.

One of our satellites positioned itself on top of the USA, and we used the signals to crash into everything the government had in digital databases. Two AIs working in tandem to crush any puny firewall in existence without care while they searched for the needed intel. In the meantime, I prepared the fabricators for the next batch of weapons. Attache Weapons and Tridentas began materializing in a couple of room and others instead began assembling the next androids that would become our Quick Response Squad. Yet another room began printing the needed Ho229 flight units for this mission.

Ark and Zea didn't hold back, I noticed some sound feeds were activated as panicked voices reached my ears, unfortunately, these girls were on a mission and soon I was staring at the mustached face of one stoic Arthur Watts. He looked like he'd seen better days despite his composure, but now I had run out of sympathy to care. "Who the hell are you? Do you know what will happen once my people…?" I cut him off.

"I don't give a shit about what you have to say. I just need answers, Alphabet Soup, what the fuck happened? Where are the children?" The man looked as if I had slapped him silly with a tuna, but I did care. "Arthur Watts, tell me where they are or so help me…"

"That project has been terminated, and if you have anything else to say, I shall hear it from your cell." He tried to end the call, but I used the supercomputer to override his commands.

"Tell me where those children are." I pressed and thanks to him using magnetic doors for whatever reason in his house, meant that I could keep him in that room until someone bailed him out. "I don't know if you have heard of what happened in Nagazora, but this…"

"Lies and farces invented by losers that can't accept their better's decisions." Oh yeah, standard defection tactics, nice try, dumbass.

"Oh really? Motherfucker, need I to remind you who ordered that Nuclear Strike? I have the orders right here, signed by YOU" I pulled out the signed paper, a digital copy, but still. "We're the only reason Hokkaido isn't a fucking wasteland, so if you want to try nuking me again, I'm shoving all the navy's Tomahawks up your ass." I glared at the man. "Listen here, you bureaucratic parasite, this is way bigger than a little clandestine project, you've invited something so far above what little power you parade around in your office and many, many innocent Americans will die because of it. Now out with it. WHERE. ARE. THE. CHILDREN" I felt my eyes begin to glow. The man looked at me and I think he saw that I wasn't kidding because he stopped whatever rehearsed line he had in mind before deflating.

"All things related to the Experiment have been terminated, need I to say more?"

All things… oh you sick bastard… "You killed them, all of them… three hundred children, the best of a new generation… just like that…"

"Nine…" he whispered.

"What?"

"Nine Hundred children, if you count those that didn't file the missing report. There were close to two thousand people on that facility. I gave the order. It was a mercy." He looked kind of defeated at that statement for a reason.

"You didn't manage to fully activate the Core, did you? The thing overwhelmed their minds, turned them into mindless drones and you didn't want to help them either..."

"It did work… the marvels we gleaned from that Shard would have thrusted humanity into a golden age…"

"Spare me the altruistic bullshit, most of it was wartime technology wasn't it? Shit that would kill you before you knew it? Parasites and Super-plagues? Or surveillance systems that would make social media die of envy? Didn't it occur to you to be suspicious that everything the Core gave to you was so easily weaponized?" I saw his eyes widening. "Ever remembered that spooks always plant faulty intel in bait to make the other side make a stupid mistake? You're the other side."

"We killed that thing; we emptied the entire western arsenal on that fucking thing…"

"Well, some of it remained, and now it's called in for reinforcements."

"What does that even mean?"

"From a freak sickness to tornadoes in Alaska, we have suspicions of how it might manifest but it could be anything really. I have yet to get responses from the Chinese but knowing them, they have pulled worse shit than you. Only question is how badly they fucked up." I smiled hollowly. "For now, call whoever you have guarding the Core of Logic and pull them out, you don't want them to be controlled for the damn thing. And oh, keep you disaster relief on standby, I'll send you some data you can forward to CDC later, but listen, any suspicious patients you get in your hospitals the next following days? Put them somewhere else. Do not keep them in large buildings full of people, or near people whatsoever. Ebola SHM Procedures can suffice until we find a better way." He looked a bit overwhelmed about my rapid switching of topics, but I pressed on. "Pay special attention to any weather anomalies and for the love of god, get every single of your agents under control. You cannot afford someone being the one to light the flares on where the enemy attacks next."

"…What?"

"You can check the recording later; we'll leave those intact. Pleasure knowing you Mr. Watts, now excuse me while we locate the next target for the apocalypse."

The call disconnected before his latest protests began.

I leaned back into the chair, as Ark and Zea returned with out bounty. Terabytes of data the CIA, DHS, and DoS wanted hidden was taken by force. But we would analyze them later, for now Project Alphabet Soup was my priority. I don't know who came up with that name but it name recognizing it way easier. Thank you, Power Rangers.

It was worse than what Watts admitted to, the site was as remote as they could manage, some decommissioned missile silos from the cold war, repurposed for those experiments. Every single child would be first subjected to drug cocktails and hypnosis to leave them completely docile, then they would repeatedly get exposed to the Core of Logic, known to the Americans as the 'Roswell Shard'. From Railguns to Cyberwarfare software, every single child would be given a blueprint by the Core. But the problem was that the blueprints were all incomplete, every single one of them missing something crucial that would stabilize the whole design. They had managed to fill in on some of them, but the vast majority were left with holes on them. So, they tried everything, sequential contacts., cluster contacts, repeated contacts. The children's minds were broken further, and further as different designs mixed in their minds and left the blueprints unsalvageable.

So only when they reached the hundred mark of casualties that someone figured out the Core wasn't going to give them what they wanted and since the results were not enough, they would get their funding pulled. So they used the last remaining children and basically made them play hot potato with the core. At that moment Nagazora happened and the wave of Honkai Energy resonated with the core and it basically gave everyone in the facility at least 30 Sieverts of radiation.

The photos of the aftermath, after Watts' people failed to contact the facility's personnel and then decided to go in, were the single most disturbing thing I never wanted to see. The only thing I could compare it was if you multiplied Barefoot Gen's bomb scene by Third Impact NERV's aftermath.

And some of them, somehow were still alive.

The video was downloaded directly into my brain, then I immediately corrupted the file thoroughly, until neither my memory nor the data remained. I could only feel the horror that I had seen something horrible. Zea and Ark's platforms hugged me while I cried in silence.

A few hours later I recovered. And what data my companions transferred; it was as Arthur Watts had said. Every single human asset of the project was terminated.

Except no. there were some survivors, only by the virtue of not being on site when the accident happened. One of them, a CIA operative, was visiting his remaining family.

And there we had out suspect. The data around him was sketchy, unlike any proper Operative, he had some discrepancies on his file. His wife had filed a report for a missing person, and he'd later forced the local PD to give up the case. The wife died later leaving him with his oldest daughter as the only family he had left.

The reason I thought we had probably located our next Herrscher?

The missing person report had been for his youngest daughter.

After the Nagazora incident, the father never came home. And the neighbors only noticed that the oldest child wasn't there when they looked at the lights being on for nine consecutive days… and the smell of rotten food.

God answered my payers. So, I asked him where Jenny was.

He showed me the place, old. It was cold. There were a lot of children, but none spoke.

No one played, no one laughed.

They were brought to play with a pretty stone, like the one mommy had on her ring.

It was bigger, and very, very shiny.

Its shined like Jenny's eyes.

And the God showed me Jenny.

I tried to talk to her, but she didn't even look at me.

She looked hurt, so I tried to kiss the pain away.

Then you came.

Smiling that stupid smile like you always do.

And you pulled out the [Gun] and aimed at Jenny's head.

You never stopped smiling as you pulled the trigger.