Armageddon: The Broken Man - ACT 1

Chapter 14 - Pick Your Poison

Chapter 14 - Pick Your Poison
>ERIC REYNOLDS

//TIMESKIP//11__HRS//

At this point, I swear I could just drop dead from sleep deprivation. I have to keep manually reinstalling firewalls in order to prevent a second hack, and every 7 hours, GL1TCH taunts me by leaving crumb trails all over the servers. I swear, he/she/it has no life whatsoever. On top of that constant computer connection, Drake's sending me endless paperwork to fill out.

A handful of it should actually go to Amelia, and that I can forgive. What really pisses me off is the fact that half the stuff he sends isn't even FHTC-related whatsoever.

I had to write invitations for his dad's 80th birthday party, if that gives any idea to the useless shit I have to tolerate on a daily basis.

I had to trust Verena with normal team operations for about a week, and I've given her a full month's plan for training sessions and lessons to be taught by Amelia. With every day I seem to get less and less sleep, and I swear I drink more coffee than I do water.

My head hits the keyboard again, and the electric clock's digits burn into my eyes.

It's 2 AM, and I'm trying -- and failing -- to block out GL1TCH. He/She/It is far more skilled than I could have ever imagined, and with every attempt, he/she/it chips away more and more information. I can't do much of anything to stop it, because if I enter the defense systems, that leaves my computer vulnerable, and I've got far more sensitive files stored there than on the servers.

"I can find her."

Quicksilver and lilac lights glow in the dark, illuminating a minuscule area around her eyes. Her voice offered nothing but her identity; luckily, the kinder side of Kathryn Lavelark is the one standing just behind my computer screen.

"I can tell you who it is, but you won't like my answer." She says, continuing with her murmuring, still barely bothering to speak clearly.

"But, let me guess," I scoff and return my gaze to the computer screen. "-there's a catch. Something prophetic and generally idiotic, like I would find GL1TCH, but lose someone or something else."

She looks away and I know I'm right.

"But, you said 'she,' so I know it's a girl, at least."

"That's true." She says, smiling at the ground. She shuffles her feet as she continues. "But that's still more than 3 billion people."

"Hey, it's less than 7 billion. Silver lining, Lavelark."

//TIMESKIP//7__HRS//
//PERSPECTIVE//10//PR__SET//

>AMELIA RUSSELL

Eric's been more and more tired with every passing day. He's trying too hard to pin down GL1TCH, to no avail. Her IP address changes with every hack, and the traces lead us to differences impossible to cross in her 3 hour intervals.

At, say, 7 AM, she'd be traced back to a pub in northern France, but at 10 AM the same day, she'd be traced to within the building.

Eric was at his wit's end, and I couldn't comfort him in the least. He was breaking cups and ripping paper, throwing his books across the room in a fit of rage.

During the day, he was too tired to be productive, and at night, he was "too tired to even fall asleep," as he kept saying. Being a "fancy-shmancy medical lady" -- another thing he's been saying lately -- as I am, I know that all of this, as an entirety, is caused by a sloppy mixture of active stress and PTSD.

He's met a "GL1TCH" before, and I'll just leave it at the fact that he was constantly being poisoned, just enough to make him sick and have terrifying hallucinations. He never told me exactly what happened, but with the way Kent acted after reading him, I knew it must have been horrifying.

The press are rioting, day and night. They demand information, and we've hard to bar the doors to stop them from breaking them down. I've prohibited the team from exiting the building until later notice; they'd get ripped to shreds, and that's probably not too extreme of an exaggeration.

I've talked to Keira a few times. It seems like she's been left alone for the most part. She mentioned that the highschoolers are more info-starved than the press more often than not, and also that the trainees have a lot of eighth and ninth grade fanboys and fangirls.

And with my experiences with highschoolers, they can be a lot more vicious than the press.

Rachel's tap on my shoulder snapped me out of it. I've been phasing in and out as of late, staring at the wall to lose myself in thought. It's become a bad habit of mine.

"Do you want any more coffee, Doctor Russell?"

She's been sweet lately, a real darling. At Field Training, something must have happened, because I swear, the Rachel I'm used to would tease a little bit more.

Something's up with Cadmus, too. He's had the reverse effect. Once he came back from Field Training, suddenly he was moody and unexpectable, not to mention more than just a little bitter and harsh. It's like he's a completely different person -- he's never even showed a true glimmer of hostility in his life -- and I know I don't like the change.

Verena seems distant, and that might be because of all the weight on her shoulders. She's a smart girl, but I'm not sure she can take all that responsibility at once. For normal team operations, she should be fine, but these are no normal team operations. She's had to take over at least half of Eric's job for him.

Nixon's not much better than Cadmus. Some days it seems like they've been friends since birth, and others it's like they want nothing more than to rip each other apart.

I don't even want to think about Willow.

It's terrifying, really, all of this. All of the trainees are suddenly completely different people. We're being hacked over and over again, and Eric is losing his mind because of it. On top of that, Kathryn could just kill any of us -- and all of us -- at any time she wanted.

It could be a lot worse, I guess. It could be like E-Day; imagine D-Day, but in the middle of a city and with countless Echoes flooding the streets. It was even worse, considering nobody outside FHTC roots remembers that it happened. Kent had to wipe every last person, sometimes having to erase entire people that were killed.

Peregrine didn't last long, poor thing, didn't stand a chance. Heru was the same, but he at least tried to save Splint and his little sister, Flora.

The Cheshire was crushed under one of the Nest's support beams, cradling a stone, but still refused to reveal her identity -- her mask had fused to her face -- even in death. One of her arms was outstretched, pointing to the rest of her trainees' bodies.

We found Eric pinned under a truck, knocked aside in the fight between Echo -- what he insisted on calling Kathryn -- and Jay. His legs were crushed, and just about as supportive as twigs. We -- Kent and I -- had to completely carry him to the nearest ambulance, 5 blocks away.

The entire time he was trying to fight back, screaming that Kathryn was going to come back for him.

The same thing could happen to the rest of us, and I won't survive a second fight like that. Kathryn pulled that energy flow once, and I'm sure she can do it again.

Sure, Keira's a decent C-5, but there's no way she'd last much longer than a few minutes.