Across Book 2

Chapter 0 : Prologue

Dartford, London, UKDecember 4, 2019 :

Galiot placed his Remington 700 sniper rifle up on the apartment rooftop ledge, aiming at the seventh floor window on the opposite building.

Adjoining the task, the nine SWAT members were ready to open fire according to their commander Galiot's orders.

The scope pointed at the target - 'Brock'. Two weeks ago a random call tipped the cops in the area about an illegal activity in Dartford street near a popular restaurant. The unknown caller said something about underground toxic radiation. Before the cops could confirm who was on the other end of the call or any detail about the caller, the call had ended. The cops went to check the place out since they had a feeling that it shouldn't go unnoticed. The services in the restaurant were paused for a while as the cops looked out for any underground hiding stations. After twenty minutes of thorough searching, there seemed to be an underground passage in the locked store room of the restaurant. Aiming their guns while they went down the passage, it was an abandoned place, they discovered and just as they were about to give up, one of the cops turned on the lights. They saw what seemed like a giant machine, big enough to cover more than half of the room. One of the cops felt like he was looking at the first ever computer that was built in 1946 - with gazillion of switches and pointy lights, in the left of this machine it was labelled as 'NEMYS' - they concluded it must be the name of this supercomputer but the question was - what was it doing here in an underground room and who was operating it?

After several hours of investigation, the restaurant owner claimed he had no knowledge about any of that. In fact he claimed it was just pure coincidence. Still, after further investigation they couldn't get what the NEMYS was about, but they did find a large amount of toxic radiation emitting from the room. The restaurant was closed and sealed until further notice. The only sustainable evidence was from the CCTV footage which recorded two individuals entering into the store room and getting out after an hour or so with no supplies whatsoever on them. It was deduced that they went to operate the NEMYS - a toxic radiation emitting machine made for God knows what purpose. The two lead suspects of operating this havoc of a machine had led to further investigation about recognising them and their whereabouts. The footage after face recognition showed that the individual named Brock was dangerous - at one time of time he did things which was definitely ... not very humanly. It seemed very supernatural and suggested he was capable of much desolation in the least. And one named 'Jacob' operated on NEMYS, punching codes and buttons for whatever matter the investigation couldn't reveal.

These two individuals were labelled as a threat for operating it. Although they couldn't be tracked down easily. A few hours later, yet another unknown caller tipped the cops about the probable location of Jacob and Brock. The cop suspected if he was the same caller who informed them about the restaurant. However the case maybe, judging the situation and the threat from the footage, a SWAT team was assembled for this purpose to conduct a stakeout in the opposite apartment.

On the rooftop, stood Kevin.

"It was me who called you." Kevin started.

"Why didn't you state your name in the call?" asked the SWAT commander Galiot.

"I didn't intend to waste our time giving out unnecessary information"

"Fair enough" said Galiot "look boy, the fact that you tipped us, was helpful. But this is going to be dangerous, I'll tell you what - go downstairs, there are cops surrounding the apartment, you'll be safer there"

"I know what I'm doing, I tracked them, now look at the seventh floor window" Kevin pointed to the opposite building.

Galiot went closer and put his sniper on the ledge, making sure the safety was on. He used the scope to zoom in on the window. It was indeed Brock. Kevin was right.