The Fall of the Society

Chapter 19: Information Progression

     All his weight forward, Devastator lunged at Sid. Shooting forward he swung both hands above his head and slammed them down directly where Sid had been standing, causing debris to go flying in every direction. Knowing he missed, Devastator dug his fist into the ground and pushed them both outward, sending a wave of debris to cascade across the room. "How are you so fast?" Devastator screamed as he spun in a circle with his fist still buried in the cement, shooting chunks of it into the air. "I just can't figure you out!"

     Standing behind a mound of rubble Sid was slightly lost in thought. "That is a problem no one before you has managed to figure out, and if they came close, they did not live to continue," Sid said a bit solemnly. "There is not a soul in this world who truly knows who I am. As you depart, remember that I gave you the chance to walk away."

     Devastator growled, "No one will ever figure you out once I smash you! There will soon be nowhere for you to run, that must scare you!"

     A laugh other than Devastators now broke the silence. Sid could not contain his amusement. "There is only one thing I am afraid of," he now spoke softly. "My ability to take life is getting way too easy, I barely have a true dilemma anymore. I used to have a conscience that could talk me out of drawing blood, but I fear it has died a long while ago."

     "So, you enjoy killing do you?" Devastator mocked. "I get where you are coming from, it is fun to squeeze the life out of someone. It is even better when you get to do it to someone that deserves it!"

     Sid sighed. "I take no pleasure in killing, it is just something I do. Just like breathing, I just do it, there is no real effort put into doing so. Anyways, I have spent entirely too much time here with you and I must really be moving on before I attract any extra attention."

     "I will just have to cure you of that problem then!" Devastator shouted as he lunged toward the pile he believed to be hiding Sid. His fist slammed into the mound and sent debris soaring across the room, but Sid was not there. He was now leaning against a wall behind Devastator, looking at his fingernails. Looking around in anger, Devastator locked his eyes onto Sid. With a burst of all the speed he could muster, he shot toward Sid like a flash. Sid was still not looking up from his hands as Devastator pulled back his hands, readying to smash both his hands into the wall where Sid was standing. His massive hands slammed into the wall and blood sprayed in every direction as well as debris from the wall. A smile crossed Devastator's maniacal face as he observed the blood splatter.

     "A bit early to be thinking you have already won," Sid said standing to the left of the giant. "That looks quite painful."

     Confusion spread across Devastator's face like wildfire before he mustered the ability to look down at his arms. A mangled mess of bone, muscle and skin hung from each of his shoulders as blood pooled under his feet. "What?" he mumbled breathlessly. "How can this be possible?" He investigated Sid's face as he fell to his knees, his strength fading quickly due to blood loss. "You did this! Is this the power you boost about, the ability to cancel other's powers?"

     Sid's face appeared solemn. "Believe it or not, that is not my ability, but it is something I am capable of, and it is the reason you now have to die. I must admit, I did not expect you to figure it out when it happened. I warned you not to make me use my powers, and you forced my hand." Taking a step toward the kneeling giant, Sid drew one of his blades from its sheath on his back.

     Surprisingly, a small smile crossed Devastator's massive face. "I can say I did not expect this end. It was supposed to be heroic, world changing. I guess this is the end you get when you take short cuts."

     "If it makes any difference, I plan to change the world, and you are now part of my story. Though no one else will ever know my story, but I will always remember your name, just as I remember the names of all those who fall to my blades." He now moved behind the downed giant and climbed onto a large piece of rubble that Devastator was now leaning against. "Best of luck to you in the next life." Sid placed his blade beneath Devastator's left ear and quickly slid it across his skin to below the other ear. His eyes had already rolled back into his head from his previous injuries. Slumping to the side, blood completely encompassed where he was laying.

     Sid stared at the downed man for a while, taking in his expression and the way his body was laying. There was a good chance reinforcements would arrive soon, but there was also a chance that others in the facility would take the commotion as side effects from Devastator's training. Either way he figured he should get a move on. He did not want to leave behind evidence or easy to recover research for the Society to recover, but this room did not have the capabilities for him to enact his purge protocol. An improvisation would need to be made, and he had an idea on how to do so. He moved swiftly over to where the destroyed drones were laying and began sifting through their wreckage. In no time, he had found what he was looking for, power cores. He collected them from each of the drones as well as a hand full of wiring and other components that he would need. Moving the supplies to the middle of the room he quickly wired the cores together and made a small bomb. The design was crude, but it would prove effective and provide his desired result. Setting a timer for roughly thirty-six minutes, to give himself time to search, he made his way to the remains of the observation room and kicked through the rubble. Amazingly he found what he was looking for, mostly intact. The file containing the information on Josh Searly.

     Now that he had what he wanted, he made his way to a side entrance into the room, figuring there was a good chance that the control panel to the entrance he came through likely got damaged when the room was destroyed. The door slid open as he approached, leading to a dark and empty corridor. He quietly moved into it and made his way through the darkness. He soon came to another laboratory door, and he used the same method as previously to enter. There was not a whole lot of interesting things to look at, so he swiftly downloaded the contents of the computers and wiped the hard drives clean before enacting his purge protocol.

     Back in the hallway he felt a shift in the earth. His device had detonated, shaking the very foundations of the structure. He could here an alarm sounding far along the corridor, echoing to his location. Picking up his pace, he wanted to locate as many user consoles as he could before the full guard descended upon him. Soon another laboratory appeared on his right and he entered it just as he heard footfall coming down the passageway. Inside the lab was completely silent other than the hum of the florescent lights running along the ceiling. This room was also very plain. There was a line of computers matched with a scanner running along the center of the room and along all the walls were very large filing cabinets. This must be the room where all the hard data is copied into digital form. Performing the same steps he had been taking in every laboratory he had come across, he quickly had the data all transferred onto his device and was ready to cleanse the room when the computer on the opposite end of the row caught his attention.

     Walking over, he stared at the screen for a moment, before looking at the cords running from it. These cords were different than the others and went in a different direction. This was also the only station in the room that had a prompt for a password displaying on the main screen. Sitting down in front of the unit, he stared over the keyboard carefully, looking for any indication on which keys were punched most frequently. The letters S, G, P, E, and SHIFT stood out as having the most wear on the keyboard, besides enter, with the S and SHIFT being the worst. After a short while he started punching in all the different possibilities he could think of, ranging from real words, to acronyms, to just plain gibberish, before finally landing on SGEPS. What it meant he was not sure, but he figured if he dug for a few moments he would eventually find what it meant. Unfortunately, he did not have that kind of time and he would have to wait until later to figure it out. Pulling the first device from his pocket he placed it into the machine, before producing a second new device from a different pocket. It was the same as the one he had used before, but this one was empty and had not been used yet, he wanted it to be easy to find these files in the future.

     Scanning the files as his device copied them all, his interest was piqued when he discovered a folder named Project Pheonix. Clicking on the file, a loading bar appeared on the screen. A slight sound to his left quickly drew his attention away, someone was about to enter the room.