Babylon Lost

Chapter 15

The only time Jiro had seen such a military force in one of the Blocks was from old videos of The Crash. In the months following that cataclysmic event nearly the entire city was put under municipal control. In the twenty-two years since there'd been troop movements to put sub-rated Blocks under martial law but never to the extent that Jiro was seeing now. It was jarring to see the parade of heavy military vehicles in the distance.

"Pax do you have any idea what's going on?" he said.

"If you're referring to the military presence ahead, I do not. Since coming back online I have not detected any kind of combat activity, although that is probably due to the limited abilities of this unit."

"Not even any fighter jets?"

"Negative, this is the first time I've tracked any kind of aircraft."

Which mean that what was happening was probably just getting started "do you have theories on what could be happening?"

"I am unsure." The AI said "but from this distance the army size looks to be in the tens of thousands."

Something big was going down.

Jiro wondered if it had anything to do with him, about the thing that was inside him. Tamira said it could transform into something that would make The Crash look like a hiccup - a cyber apocalypse.

Was this show of force being formed to fight that?

There was a huge explosion in the distance.

Jiro threw his arm up to blot out the blinding flash of flight, he stumbled back and nearly fell over. Through his hands he could make out a fireball slowly rising above the Block.

Then he heard it. A deafening rumble shattered across the water, the shockwave sent small waves over the reservoir. The destruction was immense.

Jiro stood upright, the halo from the explosion still lit up the sky making it hard to look at the blast zone. The first thing he noticed while zooming in was that there was a disturbingly lack of movement around that area now.

How many people had been killed?

"Jiro we must hurry." Pax said "I do not know how long this gate will remain open. The signal is very unstable. You could lose your chance to reunite with your biological body."

What pax was saying made sense and Jiro knew he ought to act on it, but what he was seeing now was very alarming. What Tamira had told him, the timing of his own situation, and whatever was happening here had something to do with him and he knew it.

"I've got to find our what's going on first" Jiro said running toward one of the monitoring towers he'd eyeballed earlier. He should be able to get municipal network access from that point.

"Wont a security breach bring unwanted attention to our location?" the AI said picking up on the plan.

"I don't think so" Jiro said, he didn't have any concrete proof of this, but given the look of the situation he didn't think a small systems breach was on the city radar.

"Any kind of impediment could be disastrous" Pax cautioned "the gate signal is fading, we should act immediately."

"I know you're right" Jiro said ripping the network box off "but I have to see what's going on" he ported in.

"Will you be Jumping?" The AI asked.

"No, just retrieving, log me into the central database so I can see what's happening."

Jiro was immediately greeted with a city-wide warning, alert level critical, the highest there was. Jiro had never seen the city in that state before - there'd been exercises to test the warning systems but never the real deal.