Return For Duty

The only man for the job

Carl's POV

I've said it. It's the only option I have left, i could have easily made more lies if I had to, of course. Not something I'm proud of indeed, but very useful in the line of work that i have found myself in nowadays around the politics of the world. However, i see no reason as to why would I lie to the friend and my brother-in-arms that I have known and worked with for years, especially since i still owed countless debts that he did for me and i'm afraid this one will have to be included as well. Silence hangs still in the air between us as William just looked me in the eye, most likely trying to see if I am giving any signs of lying, something he's very good at. He nodded his head, a sly smile appearing on his face indicating that he is amused.

"10 years of no contact and that's the first thing you came to me for? heh," William laughs slightly, leaning forward towards the table, arms tucked underneath becoming a form of support.

"Now you're making me curious about this problem of yours."

"Well," i sighed. " 'A problem' is a huge understatement compared to the ones we're about and already dealing with as of now." I reached towards my bogus grocery bag, it's deceivingly small exterior allowed to hide a perfectly-sized capacity for some of the very important documents that we can't let out to the world, for now.

I grabbed the two folders, putting them on the table as I slide them towards William.

"Have a look at these."

William raised his eyebrows, taking them immediately as he starts giving them a read to learn it's contents.

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William's POV

"A few weeks ago our water seismic activities sensors picked up an abnormal amount of activities near an uninhibited island eastbound off the coast of Bermuda, i assumed I don't have to tell you that we immediately went over to check such anomalies"

"Well, when you're talking about abnormal seismic activities that looked like this" I flipped the folder's page toward Carl. A picture of a massive red area almost covered the whole eastbound area of the pacific ocean near Bermuda, so much so that it looked more like a bloodstain had found itself on the map instead of pointing out an abnormal seismic activity over the sea. "I can see why you have reasons to be concerned, especially since you're in the shoes of the federation that now bounds the whole earth into one"

Carl nodded his head, "Immediately arranged an expedition heavily guarded with heavy defenses to set sail as soon as i got the call"

"And?" I raised my eyebrows, partly out of curiosity but primarily out of alert "What did you find?"

Usually, i won't be too bothered by kinds of stuff like these. If anything, i'm more worried about the fatality rate rather than the disasters themselves when they happened. Things like that happen all the time ever since the days of Adams and Eves, rather than getting up and arms about it like an idiot like most people and then trying to find all sorts of ways to get to space spouting a bunch of craps like "the earth is dying and trying to take over its grounds back from the human race blah blah blah..." everyone gets the idea, i'd rather take it as a way of mother nature trying to stretch out her legs or trying to get her head straight after all the kinds of craps we've been doing on her as the years go by. A sort of warning, if anyone tried to ignore her calls i'd say.

But, a seismic activity so big that it caused the whole eastbound area of the Pacific and Bermuda to look like they had bloodstains from it? That ain't normal unless the earth is trying to rip its own head out. Or, if someon- no, something is trying to rip the grounds apart from the inside out.