Chapter 739: What The Disaster Left Behind.
Sunshine and the boar suddenly stood in the thick, green forests of Veldek. All around them, the world was filled with giant trees and long, hanging vines. The ground was hidden under soft moss and huge leaves. In this quiet place of plants and trees, there were no people to get hurt_ just Sunshine and the beast.
No buildings to break, no people to kill. Just vegetation and silence. Well, as much silence as there could be in a forest with other deadly predators.
The boar stood up, shaking its massive head. Without the Prime Core, it was nothing_ just a very big pig with so many tusks. It looked around, seeing the bigger forest, with bigger predators that it could sense nearby and for the first time, it was worried. It looked confused.
It shuffled nervously, like an animal that realized it was no longer the apex predator.
Sunshine scoffed, adjusting her grip on the hammer. "Now that you don’t have your little power-up, I’ve leveled the playing field. Come on then. Do something. Let’s see what they turned you into. I know you can understand me, just like I know you can sense that there are some big bad things in this forest."
As if on cue, something roared loudly, causing birds to flee and the ground to shake.
The boar let out a shuddering, pathetic cry. It turned and tried to bolt, its hooves kicking up dust.
"Oh no, you don’t," Sunshine hissed.
She crouched low, then exploded upward, leaping thirty feet into the air. Lightning began to dance between the clouds, drawn to the head of her hammer like a magnet. She looked like a vengeful goddess framed against the bright Veldek sky.
"You pay for what you have done today!" she roared.
She brought the hammer down with the weight of a falling star. The impact didn’t just hit the boar; it shattered the ground beneath it. A massive crack of thunder echoed for miles as the hammer struck the beast’s spine, breaking five tusks in the process, skin, and entering flesh. The force was so absolute, so concentrated, that the boar didn’t just die_ it split in two.
Sunshine landed softly in the grass on her two feet as the two halves of the creature tumbled away in different directions. She exhaled, the static electricity making her hair stand on end.
"Dinner is served," she shouted to the creatures in the forest, wiping a smudge of dirt from her forehead.
Once again, as if on cue, a roar responded.
"You are welcome," she whispered.
*****
Back at the fortress, the fire men were finally winning. Huge plumes of black smoke still spiraled into the gray sky, but the roaring orange flames that had threatened to swallow the different parts of the base were now nothing more than hissing steam and charred wood.
Everywhere one looked, teams were cleaning up. People who had been living comfortably a day a go were now wielding brooms, shovels, and buckets, their faces streaked with soot and exhaustion.
Superhumans were lifting broken poles and overturned vehicles. Others were redirecting the flow of water from busted tanks into ponds and pools.
Earthly repairmen trained by Sunshine were already fixing the tanks so that the water could be cleaned and returned to where it once was.
Children were searching for their lost toys in the mess.
In the makeshift medical tents, the scene was a mix of physical pain and deep, emotional heavy hardheartedness. The sleeper cells_ the men and women who had been controlled by the Watchers’ light_ were back to themselves now. The milky white was gone from their eyes, replaced by a haunting, hollow look of pure guilt.
"I didn’t mean to," Adeline Croode sobbed, burying her face in her hands. She was sitting on a crate, her shoulders shaking. Both of her legs were wrapped in casts, having been broken by the robot army Sunshine released. "I saw my hand pressing the button to open the gate, and I was screaming on the inside, but my body wouldn’t listen. I let that thing in. I let the enemies in."
Nurse Kendall patted her shoulder, not sure what to say. The decision had been made to keep the former sleepers confined for now. Not because they were prisoners, but because the fortress therapists were terrified of the psychological fallout_ and because they needed to be absolutely sure the Watchers couldn’t hypnotize them again.
Dominic was going to examine them, one by one. Only when he was finished probing around, would they be released.
"This sucked," Hades muttered, standing at the edge of the biggest medical tent in Kingsbridge, with his arms crossed. His dark coat was covered in dust, and his eyes were tired. "I feel bad and they probably feel worse. Guilt is a worse prison than any place we could put them."
However, not everyone felt sympathetic. The billionaires were angry that some of their business had been destroyed.
"Do you know how much that black glass cost me!" Kris shouted, pointing a finger at a pharmacy he had just set up in the town, only for all his merchandise to go down in flames.
"That is a by the way, the food stores are decimated! Half of the rations are gone because some people decided to play door-warden for the enemy! Even the farms were not spared. How are we supposed to survive an apocalypse without food? Do you expect us to eat the sand?" Sheldon asked.
Hades had no idea why they had sought him out if all they wanted to do was complain rather than being helpful. They were following him around like puppies, just to complain nonstop. "If you are not going to help, go away." He said tiredly. "We have other food reserves so don’t worry, nobody is going to starve."
"Reserves?" Tracy Kingsley scoffed, clutching her designer bag as if it could protect her from starvation. "They broke into our houses. Our own servants were hypnotized to dump our food in the pool or make it scatter in the wind. We had enough for years! Now we have enough for weeks! Those fools are a liability. We want them gone. They destroyed our lives!"
Hades sighed, a sound that seemed to come from the bottom of his boots. "They didn’t choose this. They were victims of a weapon we didn’t understand. But," he paused, looking at the angry crowd and then back at the weeping soldiers, "you’re right about one thing. It isn’t safe for the ones that were living on the mountain base. Not with the way you all are looking at them."
He made the executive call right then and there. The former sleepers would be moved to Iron Wood City. It was a sprawling town with plenty of space and, more importantly, it was far away from the judgmental glares of the people they had accidentally hurt.
Parts of the city had already been rebuilt, and it was actually more beautiful than Kingsbridge. Ala had incorporated a lot of high tech into it. The houses were all glass, but unbreakable.
When the billionaires saw it, they would be jealous and buy property there immediately.
An hour later, as the trucks were being loaded with the crying, apologizing residents. Hades’ mind was elsewhere. He was functioning on autopilot, helping move crates of bandages and water, but his heart was a lead weight.
Sunshine was not back yet.
The last report he’d received was that she and Hadrian had gone charging after an invisible boar and vanished. Nobody had seen or heard from her since then.