The Wavering Hawk [ENGLISH]

P5. Two Sides of a Coin

Raphael watched the news solemnly. The ounce of bad news was heavier than he ever thought.

"Mikhail is missing."

Their victorious achievement for protecting conquering another countries on this Earth would be less worthy if they had to pay debt this huge.

"I didn't expect you could've foretold this one," Ares studied the map of Yemen. The green armadas of his army was slowly pushing the resistance away. "I expect nothing less from your capabilities, Your Eminence."

Generalfeldmarshall Azrael looked at the same map. "Oberst Mikhail done his job perfectly with Oberstleutnant Uriel. There was no reason for him to be there any longer, so I sent him away, just a few yards further to a camp right there, where The Princess of South East was registered as one of the volunteers."

"You could just give him order instead."

"That would put our exposure higher." Azrael refused simply. "Everything would be better if we just let the actor improvise."

"That means...." Raphael switched the map to the United of Middle-East as a whole, then moved the map to the east, whre the Federation of Equatorial located. "You've placed an eye."

"As I expected from you." Azrael showed him couple of videos: impact of climate change, desert significant growth, unknown pandemic, and their invasion. "Just few more steps."

The channel turned into a flash news, reported some death recorded in Congo, Glasgow, and Mumbai. The victims were looked like a roasted meat, with black-rotten skin, vomiting blood on the street.

"I heard they named this Medusa. Funny how they naming things from the myth that long gone before Old Age ended and using it now, more than sixty years after New Age began." Azrael closed the videos. "I'd eager to hear something good from Hadriah soon, General. I can't wait to send you a big bouquet!"

"Then...." Raphael opened a video of bizarre-looking laboratory filled with water tanks with humans in it. "This was what we found in Latkia. Twenty two Martian left in vegetative state. Eighty percent of them were soldiers that reported missing."

His Eminence didn't seem so pleased.

"Series of surgical performances were detected in their bodies. I've sent the detail to you." Raphael told him as Azrael quickly opened the mentioned files. "We've held procedures to duplicate their cells. Then, there is bigger problem."

Raphael showed Azrael another video: cellular activities of a living muscle tissues of Martian. His Eminence noticed swarm of black spot spread across the colony of nano- agents.

"It moved like our nano agents, but the truth it wasn't. On the contrary, these unknown cells were killing our nano-agents. Weakened us from the inside." Raphael explained. "We found it together with those victims. All in Union's laboratory."

***

Adults said that even in Old Age, war was part of Human's life. No matter how many victims and their obelisk stood as a warning, humanity tended to repeat their same mistakes all over again.

As if, that was how civilization restarted.

Reana groaned as her thought blown by the winds.

"It stinks...." She grunted as her eyes shifted.

Two yards from her was an area that used to be called The Green of Yemen. Now that land was no more. There is only a horrendous au bade of war, day and night.

Tonight was no exception.

"Those bunch of idiot! Can't they just called it a day?!" Behind her, Bryan snapped. "This was in the middle of the night! On the last day of summer—damn it! It's freezing cold! Would the first snow fall tonight?"