Fall of the Archangel

3. Guns and Water Heaters

When she got back to the station, the commissioner was waiting for her.

'Josephine what the hell happened? I was sitting at my desk and I hear the river froze. The Weather Department said the river freeze wasn't due until much later in January.'

'I know sir, but the liquid nitrogen spill was enough to push the river past its freezing point. I've already contacted the Weather Department, apparently with temperatures at what they are, the river most likely won't thaw until at least February.

'Damn it all. Did you find out what was the cause of this?'

'Yes I did sir, although I still have trouble believing it. I think we have a man who can defy the Archangel.'

The entire station went quiet.

'That is absurd! No one defies the Archangel,' the commissioner exclaimed.

'That's why we've been seeing Archangel App crashes since morning.'

'But if we have a man who can-,' before he could finish his sentence the station was suddenly filled with sounds of static. Everyone took out their phones and looked at them. The same ominous message was displayed on all of them.

The Archangel app calibrated for your use has crashed.

Everyone's app had crashed.

'It's him,' thought Josephine. 'He's done something again.' A police officer came in screaming.

'Sir, we've received alerts on the old alert system. Terrorists have broken into the general hospital!'

The commissioner was stunned. He had never faced a crisis of this scale before and on top of that they we're all flying blind without the Archangel.

'All units grab all the weapons you can and move out,' ordered the commissioner.

On the way to the hospital in a patrol car, Josephine remembered just how long ago it had been since she held a weapon. All lethal fire arms were banned after the Archangel came into being. The only weapons were the ones in police possession. Even that was deemed redundant by the Archangel but it allowed them to keep them. Now the time had finally come to use them.

Once she reached the hospital's main entrance, she saw the commissioner talking to Head Nurse.

'What kind of weapons do they possess?'

'None commissioner. That's the most amazing fact of them all. They were all armed with homemade weapons. Nail guns, knives such objects. One even had a modified water heater that sprayed scalding water. Once they took over they confiscated all the surgical tools and proceeded to arm themselves with them. They then threatened to cut off the power supply to the hospital. Most of our patients are on life support. They caused a power surge which blew out all the backup generators and batteries. Without power some of our patients will be dead within minutes,' she replied.

Josephine was shocked. These terrorists were obviously very resourceful.

'Furthermore they activated emergency protocols and sealed all the patient wards. In case of an emergency, every ward has its own oxygen supply and they were designed to be airtight and fire-resistant. But the terrorists activated the emergency protocols. And they rerouted the oxygen supplies into the ventilation system and flooded all the corridors with oxygen. The slightest spark could set of a flash fire.'

This effectively made all the police's weapons useless. Josephine was utterly speechless. Just who were they dealing with?

'Are all the patients safe?'

'We evacuated as many as we could but many are still trapped inside.'

While the two were talking Josephine scanned the front of the building. It was then that she laid eyes on him. The man in the trench coat. He was wearing a gas mask so she couldn't see his face. He just stood on the top floor of the hospital and looked down on them.

'Commissioner,' she attempted to get the attention of the commissioner. When she looked again the man had gone. The commissioner turned to her.

'What?'

'Maybe we should send in a negotiator,' she quickly covered up her mistake.

'I have a better idea. From what I can tell all the patients are in their fireproof wards. So we just do one thing. Ignite the oxygen ourselves.'

Josephine was appalled.

'Commissioner, please don't kill them all. We need to find out how their leader is defying the Archangel system.

'That is impossible. No one defies the Archangel,' the commissioner replied, full of himself as usual.

'Let me go in.'

'Don't be moronic. We have them right where we want them. One spark and this whole problem is settled including your so called Anti-Archangel.'

And with that he pulled out his gun and fired at the main entrance. A wave of fire erupted through the lobby of the hospital. But funnily, it didn't seem to spread to the rest of the hospital. Instead it just travelled down the main corridor of the hospital. Moments later Josephine heard a massive explosion. The shockwave knocked everyone down on their feet.

The commissioner was stunned. 'But oxygen won't explode if it's spread out that thinly.'

'Congratulations, commissioner you've done exactly what he wanted you to do.'

Five minutes later after the dust had settled, the police made their way into the hospital. All the patients were unharmed but they found absolutely no trace that the terrorists had ever been there. Eventually they found the source of the explosion. A crater so deep it broke through to the optic fibres that fed the Archangel. Apparently the man had concentrated all the explosive substances in the hospital in that room and used the oxygen in the corridors to ignite them. For what purpose, Josephine still couldn't still discern.

After technicians had confirmed that the optic fibres were undamaged they filled up the hole and went back to the station none the wiser. Later when the CCTV records from the hospital arrived Josephine set about analysing them. Not on even one could she find any image of the man in the coat. All the cameras shorted out whenever the terrorists entered the room. But maybe what if he was causing it? She pulled a grid of the cameras in the hospital. Her hunch was right, wherever the terrorists when she could see four men in the front before the cameras shorted out and four men after they refreshed. It seemed the man could short out cameras simply by walking into a room. Did he have some kind of superpowers that let him defy the Archangel? That was absurd, humans couldn't have superpowers. But that gave her an idea. Quickly she pulled up a grid of the cities cameras. Maybe this camera effect wasn't intentional but an effect of the Archangel encountering a problem. The Archangel could predict everything, but if a person it hadn't predicted entered the field of vision of a camera maybe this inconsistency caused the camera to malfunction. If so, this man who could defy the Archangel would cause crashes wherever he went. And sure enough after five minutes, she spotted a little circle of cameras malfunctioning. The circle seemed to move across the city until it stopped at one place; the city's power plant. He was already making his next move! She had to stop him. The commissioner wouldn't believe her. She had to do this herself.