Chapter 162: Twenty-Three Minutes

The President and General nodded, yet not in response to her expectations on the next topic.

Tom sucked his lips into a line as he spread out a few pictures and documents that were outside of Rachel’s line of sight. "Smart... And, no, not the Legend Quests."

"Oh? Interesting..." Ears rising a tad, Rachel’s gaze swept the board for a second.

The man took a moment to open an energy drink, then chugged it as Rachel opened the file and began scanning its contents. Her throat felt like it would have enjoyed its own beverage as she saw the first high-resolution pictures.

"Right," Tom mumbled, rubbing the edge of a photo, reasonably uncomfortable about the new discussion as Rachel examined the reports. He cleared his throat. "Follow along while I explain; this is going to get pretty insane."

"I can see that," she whispered, tail stiffening as Tom prepared to read it aloud. "This is from that Crystal you mentioned a few days ago? Was it the sand toads that we—no...something else?"

"Ahem. Astra showed you a little of this, but on Wednesday, at approximately ten-twenty-four p.m., an hour and eleven minutes after The Oscillation, we were made aware of another strange phenomenon...before you even brought many of the details about these Crystals to my attention. These are pictures taken at High Rolls, New Mexico, with a population of 1,360.

"As you can see," he said with a disgusted tone, "the entire settlement was surrounded by the same type of dome, the same unidentifiable substance as The Oscillation. You were inside one of these, and saw it cut you off from the rest of the world."

Rachel had to detach herself as he continued, trying to mentally project herself into the situation he described. She’d heard about the incident earlier during one of their discussions, and the savagery that had befallen the small town had made her stomach turn, yet her perspective on things had also changed a lot since Conner’s Legend Quest.

"Some people on a nearby highway stated that it was forming the moment The Oscillation started, and we have reports that it solidified after an hour."

"I recall the feeling when it activated—solid, but also not," she said, turning a page and sucking in her lips while reading further down the report. "Some curious people who approached the dome couldn’t get in; if they touched the barrier, then they’d instantly teleport to the opposite side of the town...

"Everything inside was completely indistinct, so you can’t see what is happening inside either. Total isolation; digging a hole revealed it continued underground, too. Hmm. It seems identical to the reports I heard from the one I was in."

Tom nodded. "Well, some differences, but it lasted exactly twenty-three minutes before the dome cracked and shattered into dust. We have to assume there were miniature crystal gateways inside, but this seems to be the result if you don’t destroy them."

Her emotional side squirmed as she read the next part of the report, and Rachel looked up at the general; the President didn’t seem to want to comment on it, stone-cold eyes still on the board. "This is real?"

The general scratched his hand and nodded. "Every horrifying detail. No known or unknown energy or material was found from the dome shattering. It’s as if the material vanished into thin air...the same as the one you were inside."

That wasn’t what Rachel was talking about, though, so she summarized it aloud. "Out of one thousand six hundred and four people trapped inside, tourists included, there’d have to be some changed individuals during The Oscillation. At least several of them were likely affected by the phenomenon in some fashion. Yet there was no resistance?"

Tom licked his lips, nose twisting in disgust as he voiced the number. "Nine hundred and fifty-five female and six hundred and forty-nine male. It looks as if they were forced into some form of satanic death ritual. My first thought was the Scarlet Hand—it fits their profile—but I don’t think this was human work."

Rachel coldly examined each brutal picture, as Tom explained. The grinning, devilish face of Yseress, gripping her demon-hide purse, or the hellish fiends of Hell that she’d seen came to mind; this didn’t have a human touch.

"By what forensics determined, their flesh was completely skinned, and it was done in a manner to make sure they’d live—somehow, they were alive for all of it. Their skin was stretched across an unknown kind of black-colored wood, with ritualistic markings carved into it and a harness of strange green leather attached; it’s extremely durable, and mysterious plants connected the skin and harness."

He slid a new photo across to her, showing the scribbles Ms. Peck made before slitting her Green Beret escort’s throat and doing the same to herself. "They don’t match the symbols the known Scarlet Hand member made, and the azure-colored paint they used has a totally unique molecular structure."

"What kind of monsters do this?" Rachel asked, her gut churning as Tom went to a brutal photo of the revolting acts. "The sand toads just wanted to murder us, efficiently and swiftly... But this? I’m not even sure if this was for pleasure. Is this some kind of ritual to connect our worlds or something?"

Leo swiveled his chair to the side. "We aren’t ruling anything out."

She took in the whole picture at once, pits filled with the blood and organs of the citizens—things she didn’t want to see again. The data showed the gore was mixed with several other weird liquids that didn’t conform to known science and must have come from their world.

"It doesn’t make sense," Rachel mumbled. "Cleaning the bones, digging blood pits into a...web design? All of this is methodical and done with precision."

The President folded his fingers in his lap. "We’re still trying to put back together each victim to determine causes of death and identity... It isn’t that hard. That is how well the skin was peeled. Teams are reassembling the remains as we speak, but the US has been hit with terrorist attacks across the states, such as the Seattle vampire incident, and now I’m supposed to address this?" He reached up to rub his nose and beard.

"What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to make this public? Five-fingered aliens with six clawed toes could attack them out of nowhere? Should I have an artist give shape to their fears with their two tails and have a live comparison with a human, showing they could be anywhere from two to three meters tall...or that they were somehow powerful enough to literally rip a fire truck to its bolts..."

Teeth grinding together, he rubbed his thighs while further scanning the report. "Show a video simulation about how they didn’t touch a single building, or how, magically, all the residents seemed to gather together as if hypnotized before all electronics were fried and recordings failed? Fuel their fear by telling them not one camera picked these aliens up. Guns were fired but seemingly useless. No shells were found, but powder residue on clothes seemed to be present.

"How about that all pets are missing, and only human corpses were discovered? No serration marks on the bones, as if they were cleanly plucked out. And all of this insanity was over and done in exactly twenty-three minutes?"