Something cool about this arc, there will be chapters every so often showing how Morgan's actions are effecting the world. This one is Rob Brownson. I wrote this chapter and then handed it over to my friend to rewrite to fit his character's thought patterns better.

Rob's pov

We knew first. Of course we did. We were at the top, the 1%, those scary rich guys conspiracy theorists rant about. The media covered it up, the governments stamped the reports "TOP SECRET," and the corporations sold their shit like everything was fine a week before it started. So yeah, we knew. It was classified from a lot of people, but not me.

After all, I was the son of the biggest corporation's CEO. We had our fingers in everything, defense, computers, news. We had it all. And nobody wanted to start a panic.

Besides, a few others probably knew about the robots too, at least the humanoid ones. They were seven or eight feet tall and weighed a couple tons, and made nothing but noise. You'd have to be bind and deaf to not notice them stomping by. But, the whole crisis started in Asia, and nobody other than the internet message boards dared to be the poor guy bringing the news to the western world until it was too late, when the smaller ones started showing up. That's when it really got hectic.

...You know, that's probably the understatement of the century.

So at first, the big robots were pretty peaceful. All they really did was walk around, leaving people alone and getting around whatever got in their way. The problems started if anyone or anything attacked them. Any gunshot, knife, thrown rock, and suddenly these huge lasers would just mow you down, or at the least incapacitate you. We saw a few melted objects too.

As they spread and started showing up more and more, our armies really tried their best to stop these things. Big tanks and bombs and stuff like that would actually destroy a few, but there were always more, and our weapons could only take out one or two until the others caught on and destroyed it.

And... then there was the symbol, this weird three-pointed circle thing. Everybody was trying to figure out what it meant or stood for. It was probably a calling card or something for whatever organization created them, but nobody could find anything on record. I remember the department of defense insisting that they had to be some sort of terror group, and we couldn't think of a better answer.

But no, it turned out to be a single person. The whole operation, as far as anyone could tell, was just some power hungry, batshit crazy girl with her unending army of robots. Where she even got all the materials and time to make this stuff? Hell if anyone knows. If she was really alone, did she deploy robots in Russia and then go to France and just continually build these robots so they never ran out? All while she was going to some Kadic Academy in France. That was the other thing, too. Records show she was a student. And the robots were...unnaturally advanced for what should have been possible for a person in her situation. She was younger than me. I honestly can't wrap my head around that.

It was… well, totally insane is what it was…

We see so much shit about the apocalypse. Movies, TV, books, but you don't expect it to ever actually happen. Morgan Xanthos decided otherwise.

Fortunately, my family and I were in probably the best possible scenario. Sure, it sounds bad, but one of our biggest divisions was defense and weaponry, and you can bet weaponry was in demand now. Governments, militias, people, everybody wanted a way to save their asses, and we were jacking up our prices like money was going out of style. Which, it all fairness, it had a chance of doing. Our Switzerland campus had defense systems, being near the mountain military installations, and reasonably large food supplies. We were about as well set for the end of the world as you could be. And hey, that was just the cost of doing business.

So life turned into a bit of a fishbowl. It all seemed like a bad storm outside to me. Something I could look out and observe but wasn't really affecting me. At least...for now. We still only had limited supplies. Eventually, we would run out...but we had weapons, which would probably become as valuable as food. We would trade. We had assets. We had a lot of assets. Sooner or later, we would find a way to destroy all of these robots and bring this Morgan to justice. Humanity wasn't about to give up, and neither was Rengrade.

Eventually Morgan took over the power grids. Most of the country dropped into darkness and rolling blackouts. Our backup generators and power rationing took over, at least for now.

It'd been about two weeks since that initial announcement she made on all the TVs and radios, and there hadn't been anymore after that. Sometimes people thought they saw her, but nobody knew for sure. For someone who claimed to be dominating the world, she didn't make herself very...known. It turned out that the weird symbol was her calling card. We got pictures of it on her hand in addition to all the robots, too.

So now we were trying to design weaponry against our new enemies. They were unlike anything we had ever seen before. There were small scuttering ones, big ones, flying ones, these really creepy ones with spindly little legs and a tail. They were are vaguely animal-shaped, and sort of bio-mechanical looking. Despite her homicidal villainy, Morgan would have been a fantastic designer for us, and I don't think me or dad would have hesitated to hire her on the spot from this work.

But she decided this was a better idea. And I had to admit...it was pretty impressive. Just, the scale of what she had been able to do. I could only think of how much she could have changed the world for the better.

I was walking by the one of the entrances. It was locked up, nice and tight as usual. I was making my rounds, giving the employees their ration of food for now. We still had plenty of food, but we had to ration until we had a consistently replenishing supply, again.

"Hey, thanks Rob." an employee said. There were sleeping bags in the offices. We slept here. It wasn't safe outside anymore. As expensive as tunnels between the buildings had been, they were a valuable asset.

"No problem." I smiled and handed them their food. I tried to keep things light for these people. Morale was a serious concern. Lots of people were worried about their families. A lot of people went out to find their loved ones. We didn't stop them. Few came back.

There was a banging at the door downstairs, it echoed throughout the room, startling many people. But...it didn't sound like the robots, it sounded like a person.

"Stay calm. I'll get it." I pulled a machine gun off the wall. If it was a robot...there were only so many bullets these things could take... I made my way to the lobby, and then slowly...carefully, I opened it.

Outside was a lanky blonde nerd, a girl with pink hair, another girl with blonde hair, about a dozen robot corpses, and a kid in a lot of purple standing near the robots with a nail gun in his hand.

"We have something you need to see." The nerdy kid said before I could say anything. He held up something. I lowered the machine gun and put the safety back on. He was human, they all were. I took a look at the thing in his hands. It looked like a bullet? But...there was stuff on it? Blue panels...

"Also if I could get some medical attention..." The blonde girl said. Then I noticed she was bleeding from her gut. Her shirt was red, so I didn't notice at first.

"Oh-uh, yeah, of course...this way." I said, and let them in. Whatever bullet they had certainly looked important, but the question still stood.

Who were these kids?

Time elapsed: 2 weeks

since ch1: a month and three days.

Hope you have an awesome day!