The Crusaders

Chapter 6: Whatever Happened To The World?

New York City, NY, May 29, 2029

The sirens flashed as the cruisers rushed through the abandoned home district of New York, heading towards the emergency that happened downtown. Early reports had shown that it was some kind of weird creatures, but apparently heroes had already managed to defuse the situation. The question was, where were they now?

Well, the police's job would have been made much easier for them if they had managed to look a few degrees to the right when they passed through the abandoned district. But even then, they still would have been hard to see. Jasper had made sure that they had picked the perfect hiding spot.

Mark watched the cop cars pass without stopping. "You were right." He turned to Jasper, who nodded. "I know these streets like the back of my hand. That's why I managed to build a safehouse here." He walked into a random building that was completely deserted, save for a few ratty mattresses and traces of graffiti that suggested that the homeless used this place as a refuge.

Jasper walked up to a wall, then brushed off a section that had been covered in dirt and grime. It revealed a hidden camera lens that he then looked up into. A small blue light came out of the lens and scanned his face, then went away. "Welcome, Jasper Singh." A pleasant female voice said, and then a portion of the floor slid away, revealing a staircase that led to a floor below the building. "Cool." Nyx said as they walked down.

As they descended into the dark basement, Jasper spoke up. "On." At the sound of his voice, a small bunker-like room lit up with fluorescent lights on the ceiling, highlighting a bed and a similar-looking computer like the one from the Belltower. He went over to a small grate on the wall, and then tapped in a code on a keypad. It opened and revealed a place to hang the suit. After stepping out of it and leaving it in the grate to repair, he was only in his t-shirt and jeans.

Mark looked around and then at Jasper. "When did you have the time to build this?" Jasper sat down in the chair in front of the computer and sighed. "I had a lot of time on my hands after I retired. Guess that doesn't matter that much anymore." Lara sat down on the edge of the bed. "Yeah...we all just broke pretty much every single United Nations law against us..." There was silence as everyone in the room processed that fact.

Then, it was Nyx who broke the silence. "C'mon guys, you're still on this? You just saved those people back there! If you hadn't been there, hundreds more could have died! That thing...trust me when I say you should be glad it's dead." Jasper turned to her. "Nyx...back at the Belltower when that thing first landed, you said not now...do you know what that thing was?"

Nyx's lips pressed together tightly, and her muscles locked up, but she nodded. "Yeah...that was one of the species that wipes out all of humanity." Everyone took that in. "An...alien?" Arthur said, as if he was trying to find the right word for it. Nyx nodded. "In a sense. We don't know exactly where or when they come from, but we do have a name for them. Their language is way different and more advanced than ours, but the closest translation we have for them is...the Inquisition."

It was as if the very name itself lowered the temperature of the room to freezing cold. Mark suddenly was reminded of what he felt when he saw his vision of the monolith. A sense of dread and ominous terror. Like whatever was coming couldn't be stopped, and was bigger than anything they'd ever seen.

After looking at the reaction in the room, Nyx rubbed her hands through her hair, already flashing back to yesterday, or in 33 years. She hated how time travel messed with her head. She remembered the ships chasing after her, being almost gunned down by them time and time again. It was like being chased by the Reaper.