Pause

Chapter 17

Micah and Ulises quickly retreated into the control room and secured both the outside and inner doors shut.

Micah resumed time.

"Wooaah," Farah said in surprise, hand at her sidearm. "Yeah guys, seriously, never do that again."

"Sorry. Bad news. They're coming. And our devices, er, don't work anymore. We must proceed, now."

"What do you mean, 'they' are coming?" Farah asked.

"Them. All of them," Ulises answered.

They and the soldiers heard loud impacts against the outer walls. Muffled cries seeped through as well.

"The alpha-creatures," Micah confirmed. "They've multiplied."

Micah immediately went to the main console. He tapped in the appropriate commands.

He hit the launch button.

"God help us," he prayed.

* * *

Outside, eight anti-weapons deployed from the lab. They began streaming high up into the sky, contrails following behind them, into the Earth's lower atmosphere. They glowed like giant shooting stars.

They then began to fall back down onto the planet in wide arcs.

The whole hemisphere of Micah's side of the planet was targeted. The warheads proceeded to hit their programmed destinations.

Each anti-weapon had a blast radius of hundreds of kilometers. The plan for the serum inside them was for it to "disinfect" the Infected, neutralizing the Biogen within them, as well as terraform the surrounding lands with serum-rich flora.

The planet would return to life again. The Doctor had been brilliant.

Or so they had hoped.

The Doctor's lab vanished from Micah's dimension. All that was left in its wake was a large crater-shaped hole in the sand, surrounded by the circling legion of alpha-creatures.

They all screamed in both rage and agony as a warhead approached their location above them, seconds away from landing.

The sky turned a bright, shining emerald green.