Bubble Energy Taken by Force

Ranch House

 The two men grumbled as their IT expert fiddled with a stack of electronics. "Hurry up and finish repairing the hard disk array. The infidel scientists are more resourceful than we feared. They nearly succeeded in thwarting our mission. One of them may have already figured out a way to contact the outside world by now. We must transmit the full image of the disk now before the police storm in."

"Shut up. I can't concentrate with you hovering over me lecturing. I already missed noontime prayers repairing this."

The crew cut man stepped closer to the kneeling specialist and towered over him, clenching his fists. "You never tell a superior officer to shut up. Do you understand?"

Startled, they jumped when a man screamed, "Water balloon fight!" A partially filled kitchen trash bag flew across the room. Upon impact on the rack servers' sharp edges, it tore, releasing five liters of water mixed with a box of salt to make it more conductive.

The room blazed white from shorted high-tension electricity. Massive, writhing white-blue lightning sizzled through drenched racks first, then touching metal light fixtures, exploding fluorescent tubes, and melting holes in file cabinets. One wispy rope hit a fire extinguisher cylinder, knocking it off the narrow shelf. Seconds later, circuit breakers shut down the power, throwing everything into darkness once molten sparks cooled.

"How about a machine gun fight?" a deranged man screamed while reaching for his AK-74M assault rifle. He froze after realizing that it became a corroded wreck lying in a bubbling pool of acid. A nearby battery bank leaked from several cracks in plastic containers.

"You're gonna be dead man. I'm gonna cook you." Holding a can of air freshener next to a lit candle, he confidently moved forward. Fiery tongues roared from the pressed nozzle.

While Stephen quickly retreated deeper into the house, a forgotten four-liter keg of beer cooked over a pile of burning paper. Pressurized canister groaned from rapidly expanding gasses inside until the top failed explosively. Directly above the keg, a high voltage electrical panel for power distribution was hosed by sputtering streams of sticky, foamy, and very wet stuff. Flurries of electric arcs crackled from the cabinet before an expanding plasma cloud obscured it.

Startled from the noise behind, he dropped both candle and can. Instantly, third-degree burns scarred one of his hands.

Another circuit breaker tripped. It probably came from the county's power plant. Stephen could still see clearly enough. Flames from burning rack servers cast a rude red glow.

Screaming in bestial rage from his burns, he kicked his smoldering can into the fire. Without hesitation, he opened a large jug of bleach and poured household toilet bowl cleaner into it. Chemical reactions blew noxious yellow-green smoke into the room. Chlorine gas! A single sniff can cause permanent lung damage and death.

"May I help you with a tidbit of background information about the Topheth's Sword cult? Their favorite tactic is to leave someone behind to engage the enemy, enabling the rest to escape."

"I can vouch for its effectiveness," Stephen groaned while listening to squealing tires as the waiting Volkswagon peeled away. Keep me away from the gas no matter what. It's the same poison used for slaughtering men during World War I. What's going on? The controls seemed sluggish lately."

"Jack requested that I upload to him the video recording of the mainframe malfunction and fire. Your controls will return to normal after its completion two minutes from now. Warning! Crates of C-4 explosives scattered throughout the house are extremely dangerous in this condition. You should depart from here no later than one minute from now. The fire is rapidly spreading."

Stephen continued smashing through walls, knocking down framed pictures of famed terrorists. "Looks like the power surges melted everything electrical, including the phones. Even the surge protectors got electrocuted. Darn it! Looks like we still need to face them alone. Computer, can you at least improve the gain to the radio? I'm suddenly having trouble with a lot of hissing sound."

"We use a digital FM signal system which is immune to most outside radio interference. Please give me a few seconds to analyze the source. Searching through the audio database. Got it! The sound patterns you are hearing appear to accurately match one thing."

Before the computer could say anything more, a man with a scarred hand banged open the door. "Burn baby burn!" He wheezed out of breath from his chemical gas exposure.

"Please warn the extremist to immediately extinguish his flame thrower before it ignite combustible gas escaping from a cracked pipe."

"Natural GAS?" Stephen yelled. Instantly, he jammed the thrusters at absolute maximum power. A seven-meter wide, thundering inferno completely swallowed pathetic fire squirting from the military grade flame thrower along with the man behind it. Powerful suction, from Stephen's mad escape, erupted with a tremendous report powerful enough to shake the room. Holes, leading to the eastern sky, magically appeared in several walls and a ceiling. Shredded plaster, books, and other debris followed Stephen, gracefully arcing to the next county. Blinding, thunderous fireball bodily lifted the house several meters. Every window blew out. Another massive explosion dissolved the house into splinters. One final eruption, more powerful than the first two put together, erupted from deep beneath the ground. Hazy shock wave rings flattened every tree within a kilometer radius. Blazing yellow light shone like the sun before fading into a towering cloud, bubbling and foaming with restless energy. A 200 kilogram exquisitely carved wooden snake coiled to strike briefly rode the fiery surge before bursting into a shower of embers.

"My scanners detected no radiation so it's not a nuclear explosion. You are safe."

"Still bad enough. Better here in the empty forest than our planes, trains, and malls. That Topheth's Sword cult definitely more than earned their deadly reputation."