Milford didn't wake up much later. When he slowly lifted his eyelids, it was just after dawn in Beijing, and when he looked at the clock, it was around 8:00 a.m.
He could hear water coming out of a shower head from the bed he was laying in, while also seeing mist coming from a small crack in the bathroom door. Milford knew it was Max in there because he could see Pablo wide and awake sitting on the edge of their bed, getting their shoes on.
"Where are you going?" Milford slurred, still half asleep.
"Getting clothes for Max, then we're gonna find this Marcus a-hole," they replied.
Milford was confused. "Wait, did Ajax tell you about him?"
"Yep."
Milford plopped down back on the bed as a response.
"You wanna save the world or not?" Pablo asked.
"Yeah, I do," Milford whined jokingly.
Pablo didn't say anything else when they left and shut the door.
After around five minutes of laying in bed, Milford got up and looked out of the window. The city of Beijing looked bleak, as if it were winter. It must have been a cold day there, unlike the near-end of the school year up in New York.
He heard Max getting ready in the bathroom by sounds of towel movement as he was repeating the plan he had in mind over and over mentally.
First, they would find that abandoned factory, wherever that was. Then, they'd go in and stop Marcus and the Rinchor from killing everybody in the world. Finally, they'd go home and celebrate. Actually, Milford thought, they didn't need to do that, because everyone would kill them if anyone found out they were gone.
Milford waited patiently for Pablo to return by watching a movie on TBS for a short amount of time. He didn't know what movie it was, but he was laughing at the jokes in it.
Something important struck him, then. He should check world news broadcasts to see if the world was doing okay. Milford quickly switched to Fox News.
Immediately, what he saw didn't shock him at all. It was normal, everyday news about unnamed people dying in a car crash. The newspeople, one boy, one girl, didn't seem at all surprised about anything. They looked like they just wanted their paychecks, just like whenever Milford watched the news any other day. There were Chinese subtitles on the bottom of the screen, but they were speaking English, so that wasn't so much of a problem to him.
There were blank yet informative faces on the screen, when out of nowhere they were receiving breaking news from their own respective earpieces. As time passed, they didn't say anything, which surprised Milford a little for an expert reporting program. He could hear the distant voices of others in the studio shouting things in the background as they listened to it as well.
The male news host glanced at everyone as if they needed permission to announce it. With sweat on their forehead, they didn't bother to wipe it off with their hand as they spoke, "The White House, in Washington D.C, has inexplicably collapsed in a fireball... We have yet to hear if the president and their family, along with thousands of representatives, have perished. H-here's our live feed of the remains of what once was our beloved White House."
As the news people were silent at the footage of the White House being shown, so was Milford. The breaking news banner at the bottom didn't even change until a while after the commentary was over. They were that shocked to do anything. Milford could hear Max scream from the bathroom, "Wait, what!?" Milford didn't really process he even heard it until five seconds after they actually said it, because there were a plethora of thoughts going through Milford's mind at that time.
"This is like 9/11."
"What are we going to do?"
"Pablo needs to come back. Or maybe he heard the news already, I honestly don't know."
"It had to be Marcus, it had to have been."
Milford was nearly fuming when narration came back to the news after what seemed like forever. "Twitter and social media are already exploding with hashtags not even two minutes after the attacks," the female piped in. Milford thought it was the least important thing they could've announced, but he desperately wanted more information, so he kept watching. "Nobody knows who did the attacks as of now, but there's surely, definitely going to be investigation."
"Damn," Milford muttered.
He switched off the TV in complete frustration. He could almost feel the weight of everyone in the world finding out through things like social media because he had something to do with this. He vowed to find Marcus, wherever Horomir said he was, an abandoned factory somewhere? He didn't really remember. He had to go now, even if Pablo wasn't back. Besides, they'd be in a pissy mood from going back and forth between stores.
As soon as Pablo popped into Milford's head, they arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, from behind the door, startling Milford.
"DID SOMEONE BOMB THE WHITE HOUSE OR AM I JUST GOING LOOPY!?" They screamed at the top of their lungs, holding a shopping bag full of more clothes.
"Thanks for the clothes, Pablo," Max muttered, almost bored with the national tragedy. Pablo just stared at them extremely awkwardly for a ten second period of time before blubbering and handing them the clothes.
Pablo and Milford sat watching the news report while they were waiting for Max to change into clothes. Milford could hear Pablo sniffling in-between every two or three sentences the reporters said.
"Like, I wasn't born in America, and I thought I wouldn't care about it as much when it would be destroyed like this, but I realize that I do. It's really ironic, you know?" Pablo seemed to be rambling, but Milford let them know he understood by slightly nodding his head to agree with his statements.
Max came out of the bathroom with a South Park design of Eric Cartman on their shirt. It looked like it was from 1998. "Did you get this from a thrift store or something?" Max asked Pablo.
"Max, we're in Beijing." Pablo left it like that.
"Does Ajax want us to meet them somewhere along the shore of the city somewhere? I don't believe they'd go out in public," Milford asked.
"Yeah, I guess. We'll meet them at the docks that are at the literal edge of the country, near the water," Pablo decided aloud. Milford and Max agreed and left the hotel room with the bags of old clothes in there. They wouldn't need them after what they were going to go through.
