Thanatos

Chapter 25

"Wait, you're telling me that you've known for some time now that Thanatos is one person and that our last mission against the New Dawn brothers was a total waste of time," Kei said to Megan and Dennis after they caught the others up. "And I don't care about you not telling the others, but why didn't you tell me?!"

Jay scoffed beside her. "Someone lies and keeps secrets on Olympus and she's surprised," he said. "Isn't that rich?" He scoffed again.

"What's that supposed to be mean, Jay?" She turned towards him with a stern glare on her face.

"It means exactly what you think it means, Kei," he returned; and the conversation degenerated into a screaming match from there.

None of the others could be bothered with the duo though. They themselves were struggling to with the  announcement. Their reactions, though mostly silent, were still unpleasant in the direction of the two heads.

But Jay's right, Megan thought, groaning inside her head. Olympus was a place so filled with secrets and lies that she herself had become unsettlingly used to it. She had even made herself an accomplice to one; or two really, if they counted the Sundown Protocol – she was more than sure now that Jay remembered what went down in Chihuahua. His reaction to Kei's outburst more than confirmed it.

Unfortunately, it didn't take powers to know that sitting around, throwing blames at who knew what and didn't tell wouldn't help the matter at hand. So, she raised her hand for decorum.

It didn't work.

"Enough!" Dennis banged the table and everyone came to an abrupt stop. "We'll fight each other on our faults later. Right now, there's work to be done." He signaled to Megan. "Miss Months, if you please."

"The director's right. The mission is priority," she said and made a gesture to zoom Thanatos' message on the screen. "We need to decipher this, especially as we can confirm now that it's the most relevant clue to finding Thanatos, seeing that it was left for us in two places."

"Actually Megan, I think it was left for you," Adolf countered, highlighting the "o daughter of Months" part. "You may be the key to cipher."

"So, what has the great "key" got for us from the past few secret meetings she'd had with her great ally?" Kei rounded a sarcastic look from Megan to Dennis.

The duo was silent in response.

"It's okay if you've got nothing, Megan," Ricardo spoke up just then, his voice surprisingly gentle in light of all the chaos that had ensued previously. "To be honest, I'm not sure we can fully trust this Thanatos message. It'd be strange if they really wanted us to catch them."

"Catch them," Megan suddenly caught on to something there. "The purpose of the message isn't for us to catch Thanatos. It's for us to bear witness to the works."

"But if we're going to see them kill people, we'll have to be..." Adolf's voice trailed off as he seemed to catch on to something too. "How many lines does the message have?"

"Five." Dennis highlighted the entire message for context.

"Excluding the introduction."

"Three."

"And how many Thanatos incidents have we uncovered so far?"

"Three."

Everyone turned to the words now with new eyes.

"The last line of the message spoke about black soil," Jay began. "That is usually synonymous with African lands in poetic literature."

"Diamonds are somewhat the most important rocks there are on earth and South Africa is famous for it," Dennis completed.

"New York is known as the concrete jungle," Megan came in now. "Lots of steel buildings too."

"And Norway has been hailed in recent years as one of the top places in preservation of cultural heritage," Ricardo added. "It's up north so the snow comes into account too."

"So, the lines refer to the locations of the Thanatos attacks," Kei said. "But these attacks are already carried out so what's the point of the witnessing now? Norway. New York. South Africa. What's next?"

Just then, the computer began to whirr out of nowhere. "Norway. New York. South Africa," an AI voice said. "Password accepted."

"Umm, what password?" Kei looked as confused as the others.

The lines on the screen shifted up and a new one was added underneath: The sun and its morning path.

"It's a new location," Dennis said. "A fourth attack is imminent."

"The sun and its morning path," Ricardo quirked an eyebrow. "But what place has something to do with the sun in the morning? Or what place doesn't really?"

"Maybe they mean where the sun rises in the morning," Sam offered.

"You mean the East?" Adolf turned his head a bit as he stared thoughtfully at the words again. "The land of the rising sun."

"Japan!" Kei exclaimed, her face suddenly going pale. "The next attack's in Japan." She looked at Dennis and something unspoken passed between them.

"Japan's a big place," he said, his eyes pointedly on the teenage speedster. "Even though we've gotten a general location, there are still many other things to narrow down; and even if we do get them all, we can't be fully sure we can get to the actual explosion site before Thanatos carries out the attack."

"We have to do something, Director!" She stood up in fury.

"And we will," Megan intervened, "but we have two weeks to figure it out." She pointed at the timer beeping at the top of the message. Apparently, the AI had identified the fourth decipher to be correct and started a countdown, no doubt at Thanatos' request. It was a game of cat and mouse now.

"Two weeks," Jay said. "How do we get ahead of this in two weeks?"

"First," she looked at the work before them and sighed, "we've got to get to Japan."