Chapter 410: The Audience
The bolt of black lightning felt like death from above, like god had decided that Laz was a plague on the land that needed divine retribution. Or at least that would have been the case if Laz believed in god.
Feeling the bolt close to descending, Laz’s first thought was to run and hide under the injured god Tezcatlipoca, but a voice in his head stopped him.
:You need to face this yourself. Without directly standing up to the will of the world, you will hinder whatever growth you may achieve in the future,: Ichpochtli advised, obviously still present.
Laz felt for a moment like maybe she was just trying to kill him off, telling him to take that kind of blast directly, but then something else quickly echoed in his mind.
:Is an Asura really so weak?: It was only a whisper of a voice, but one that Laz would never mistake who said it. This was also the only thing the voice said before it became silent again, like it was never even there.
Laz smiled as he felt the the burning on his chest, the blackened tree alive, but just briefly. It was now that Laz understood that as soon as he used her energy to restore his life, she was watching. No matter what her purpose was, she needed him and was therefore going to watch out for him.
Laz looked up at the lightning bolt, unaware of many others watching as well.
...
A drone circled overhead, far away from the lightning strikes but with a camera capable of capturing everything that was happening. While the onlookers seemed horrified, one person was just smiling as though he had found the man who murdered his lover. Agent Wallace took a brief look at Tommy before looking away again, resisting the urge to run from the madman in the room.
"He’s here. Of course he’s here. He’s everywhere. Everywhere I go, everything I do.... He’s always there," Tommy said when his ramblings were coherent.
Agent Wallace clapped his hands.
"Is everything prepared?" The agent said, getting the attention of the general who still looked like he had been hit by a bus after watching the proceedings. This particular general had been assigned as a commander with many years of field command and operational knowledge. After they had lost Laz many weeks ago, the government decided they needed to take the threat of Laz far more seriously and the upper brass decided to assign the general to oversee the military movement of not only the bio solders but also the ground and air troops. As such, when they had gotten noticed of a disturbance in the area, the general had sent out the two battalions to surround and take control of the compound.
At that time, no one knew that Laz was involved. Even if they had suspected, the general wouldn’t have committed more troops as most were on standby until they had gotten a confirmation on their target.
Now things were different as the drone had identified Laz. But even before that, seeing the lightning raining down on the troops and the almost one hundred foot tall man being blasted away and then spitting up Laz; no one in the command unit could believe anything that had happened.
No one except agent Wallace who seemed to no longer be surprised by anything.
As for Tommy, who was sent by Jesse to not let Laz escape, he was just this side of losing whatever cool he had managed to regain after New Orleans.
"Yes. I have five battalions ready to storm the compound in about 15 minutes. Attack choppers will be circling the area shortly to go in after the AC130 has leveled the ground. By the time we are done with them, the only thing we will have to worry about is collecting enough remains to identify the body of that... thing," The general said at last, after he had gathered himself.
"I don’t like this. I feel like all we will do is give him a window to escape during the carnage," Agent Wallace commented, but the general shook his head.
"The pentagon has said they don’t care if he is alive or dead. They just want him neutralized. If he was in a more confined setting, maybe we would stand a chance of taking him alive. But out here, in the open with nothing but hundreds of miles of trees and rocky terrain? Even a newbie could get himself lost in there. And from the reports, this Laz is the most dangerous infected we had seen to date. No one wants to take the chance of him surviving this encounter. Especially after all of the times he has escaped and survived in the past. I have to say, if this... kid... were on our side, I would almost feel bad for our enemies," the general commented.
"But he’s not. And him and those like him... they never will be..." Tommy said, waking up enough from his trance to interject a comment that caused everyone in the know to just turn their heads away before rolling their eyes. Agent Wallace, the general and most of the command staff that had been following Agent Wallace all felt the same way; the ’chosen’ weren’t any better than the ’infected.’ While they all had been fed the details regarding why the chosen were their allies, they had gotten the briefs on situations involving the infected and those involving the chosen. While it was true that there were several cases involving the infected killing humans or other atrocities, background records show that most of those who committed such crimes had been doing them long before the change. The only difference now was that those people were a lot more dangerous than before and harder to capture or kill. As for the ones who were involved in something who hadn’t had a previous record, most of them included reports about normal people changing and losing control, not being able to adapt to their new powers and injuring the ones closest to them or those trying to help them. While this was seen as proof of their danger, there had been arguments supporting those who had lost control. A man who never fired a gun before wouldn’t be able to handle a high powered rifle with any accuracy just like a man who had never driven a stick shift before would be able to handle a high powered sports car. It was just a matter of lacking experience but not having a chance to learn.
As opposed to that, the chosen didn’t just get powers all at once and it didn’t cause strange mutations that they had no idea how to control. Instead, they were able to get used to things slowly, helped in part by the government instituting programs to help them learn and be a helpful member of society.
One of their best examples and PR princesses was the one called ’The Angel of America." She had been one of the first to go through the training program and come out the other end as a magically gifted healer. It was said that she could even bring the dead back to life as long as they hadn’t been dead for more than five minutes before she could save them. While this might have been an exaggeration, there were many documented cases involving witnesses and recordings proving some truth to those words.
While the world knew of the Angel, there were many more chosen who they would never hear of. One example was a man who grew into his powers, giving him control of light itself and many facets of using it. When he graduated from the program, he found that there was a lack of work for him since his abilities didn’t offer much in the way of practical application. Being side-lined like that after all of the promises made to him caused him to have a psychotic break and in this state, he ended up starting a cult. When the church of the chosen found out about it and decided they had no choice but to take him down before he became any more well known, he had already amassed a following of hundreds of worshipers who thought he was the second coming of god. Besides, his 13 child wives and slaves numbering in the dozens from the ranks of his followers who ended up turning on him, they had found several other chosen who were deemed useless and had ended up following him as their supreme leader. Unfortunately for those who had gone to shut him down, this god of light had turned his abilities to bend and control light into the ability to shoot lasers out of his hands and eyes. Not only him, but his chosen followers had also learned to weaponize their abilities. Dozens of chosen and hundreds of solders were killed while trying to take him and his followers down the first time. After that, they had no choice but to give everyone up for a loss and blew the hell out of his estate while armed groups of special forces found and killed off every one of his followers who lived outside the estate.
This was just one of many cases known to the armed forces. Even though the information was classified at the highest levels, the stories made their way through most of the command structure.
Those who knew of this had a hard time trusting any chosen who seemed to have a weird personality traits... like those Tommy had been showing this entire time.
"Right..." Said the general, disdaining to argue with Tommy about anything related to who were allies and who were enemies. As far as the general was concerned, while Laz might have been an enemy and a monster, he was also a fighter, a survivor... a warrior. He didn’t just go on killing rampages nor did he target innocent humans. In fact, unless they tried to kill him, he didn’t even bother with those that showed aggression towards them. After the break out incident in New Orleans, it was Laz who helped clean up the mess.
The general couldn’t help but respect him, even if he had to kill him.
"Prepare the feed. At least now we will be able to show the citizens that these infected can be killed, just like anyone else."
The general didn’t want to do this, but it was an order from above. Laz had been to well known for them to just announce his death. It needed to be seen to be believed, otherwise he would continue to live on in nightmares, conspiracy theories and random sightings. Just his name alone could provide a rally point for the infected in the future and that wasn’t something they wanted to see.
"What if this backfires general?" Agent Wallace asked, voicing the general’s own concerns.
"Well... Then that will be your problem since I will no longer be here to have to deal with it," the general replied with a sigh.
"As soon as the plane is within range, begin the attack," the general ordered.
"There is no turning back now..." Agent Wallace said with a sigh.
