[402] 5.26 A Familiar Pain

Planet Earth, Year 3 A.I. (September 2026 CE, 42 months after System Integration)

In a situation which I don’t look forward to familiarizing myself with further, I awaken in a hospital.  As expected, my little stunt did trigger my yearly ‘Get out of Hell Free’ card.  The goddess willing, I won’t need it again in the coming conflict.  I go ahead and mentally recite a couple of silent prayers, not necessarily expecting or even hoping for a response.

I’ve still got some nausea, although most of the rest of the pain is gone.  According to my [Status] window, I’ve been afflicted with the expected case of [Acute Radiation Sickness].  Thanks to my body’s naturally higher regeneration, along with the work of whichever healer cast [Restoration] upon me, it should not progress beyond a few days of infirmity.  I just hope I actually get those few days to recover before the world returns to its increasingly pyretic state.

The door to my room opens.  For a moment, my eyes widen in the hopes that it’s Chloe.  The lack of her presence through [Angelic Bond] hits me in the instant my eyes meet those of someone else familiar, whom I did not expect to see and yet in hindsight, probably should’ve.  A certain well-dressed man in full military insignia, three stars emblazoned upon his vest and each of his shoulders.  Each of his steps is as controlled as it is confident, and as we stare each other down, I find myself on the receiving end of the sort of look that just screams ‘a parent who is disappointed in their child’.

Indignation wells up in me to rebuff the now-lieutenant general, but sickness prevents me from meeting the full force of his presence.  Instead, I just shrink back into my bed and allow him the temporary display of superiority and control over the room.

“Miss Seraphina Mortensen…  Or is it Seraphina Jacobs yet?”  He salutes me.

I return the gesture.  “Bold of you to assume I’ll be the one taking her name, Nicholas.  Or do I have to call you Lieutenant General Richardson now to maintain proper military decorum and protocol?”

“I don’t think it’s a particularly bold assumption from what I know of the two of you, Your Excellency.”  Despite the address, there’s nothing formal or polite about the tone in which he says it.  “Speaking of, I was informed that you were received as, and I quote, a visiting foreign dignitary entitled to the protections of diplomatic immunity as recognized by international and customary law.  I don’t know how you managed to win over one of my European counterparts, but I do hope you will share the source of your sorcery in short order so I might commence with the business at hand.”

“Just slew a high-ranking operative of Apeiron and then flew across the Atlantic chasing a bunch of ICBMs in the hope that I could prevent global thermonuclear war.”

“Your enthusiasm and willingness to aid in such noble endeavors is appreciated and certainly noted.  Your methods, however, could use some improvement.”

“Well, forgive me for not having studied nuclear physics and only getting a three minute crash course on the design of thermonuclear warheads before I was sent off.”

“In that regard, you performed admirably.  The problem is that such heroics were likely not even necessary at all.”

“What the fuck?”

“The fuck, indeed.  And a regrettable though foreseeable consequence of your decision to withdraw from public life after the battle with Renault some three years ago.  Had you chosen to remain in contact and receive periodic intelligence reports as I had suggested, you would have already been well aware that the United States had been developing an anti-missile defense system that was about to fire, just seconds after your little stunt ended up neutralizing the missiles’ detonation systems.”

“You mean that everything I did, bringing myself to the brink of death, possibly even stepping over it very briefly, was all for nothing?” Even with my body weakened from the radiation poisoning, anger still wells up from within me.  As I am, I can do nothing but stew in hearing that all my deeds were for naught.

“Your actions… likely slightly reduced the amount of incidental radioactive fallout associated with the leakages.  Other than that, I’m afraid that that’s correct.  As for how you actually managed to survive that tumble, in the state you were in…  Well, I have my idle curiosity about the matter, though I won’t pry further.”

I sigh.  “Actually… where exactly am I?  And why are you here?”

“You’re back in Washington.  Specifically, recovering in a bed at Walter Reed.  And I’m here because someone has to take responsibility when you literally fall out of the sky after having escaped death through whatever means that you have at your disposal.”

“Of course I am,” I mutter under my breath.  Why would it be anything else?  “Anyway, to change the subject again, what exactly are you here for?  I can’t imagine that your schedule is so open after everything that you would come all the way out here for a purely social visit.”

“I’m afraid that’s true, so, for the sake of not wasting either of our time, I will be brief.  The rogue terrorist group Apeiron that you mentioned earlier.  While you were unconscious, they formally declared war upon the United States.”  Nicholas pauses.  “I’m not sure if you are aware of the geopolitical ramifications of what they were hoping to accomplish with their opening salvos.”

“I imagine they wanted to trigger a proportionate response.”

“And they nearly did.  They would have, were it not for cooler heads prevailing and a decision to trust in the capabilities of the missile defense network rather than invoking the principles of mutually-assured destruction.”

“They wanted to have their own lands bombarded by a nuclear assault?  What the fuck?”

Nicholas just sighs.  Despite my tumultuous personal and professional relationships with the man, the [Master Tactician] can always be counted on to have figured out all the angles long before anyone else even starts to unravel them.  “Despots and tinpot dictators have always needed an enemy to rally the populace around, both in order to maintain popularity and also to get the people to accept the sort of crackdowns and secret police that form the backbone of any authoritarian regime.”

He pauses for a fraction of a second.  “Normally, this requires months, years, even decades of propaganda to foment the sort of national zeitgeist requisite for such a takeover.  But if we had launched those warheads back, and had they landed— and they would have landed— we would have bought them more propaganda in one afternoon than billions of dollars could ever have attained.”

“But don’t they have similar missile defense systems?  Spare me the American Exceptionalism bullshit; I know they have plenty of capable [Ethertechnicians] and [Master Tacticians].”

“Of course they do.  Systems which would not have been employed, thanks to the operatives they have puppeting European governments behind the scenes.  It would be the perfect cover to whip the populace into a rage all while pointing the fingers at the ineffectual political regime still nominally in power.”  Seeing my building frustration, he continues in an even more pointed tone.  “We would have given Apeiron the perfect onramp to finish their takeover, and a population clamoring for the World War III that they have been angling for all this time.”

I lower my head, the full gravity of the situation finally starting to set in.  “So what happens now?”

“Contingencies are being discussed and protocols are being worked through.  Diplomatic channels remain open, if strained.  As for you, you are going to fully recover before you do much of anything.  And do not worry about Miss Jacobs; transportation across the Atlantic is already in the works.  I expect her to be here by the end of the day, God willing.”

I sigh, realizing that none of the paths forward for me look good.  It seems that I’m forced either to shrink away from the conflict and insulate myself completely, or subordinate myself to Nicholas’ command, at least for the time being.  It might be just my Class influencing my thoughts again, but of the two, the second is less intolerable, if only just.

“I suppose you will have to handle other matters.”

“Let us meet again once you have healed fully.  Until then, I shall leave you to your recovery, Miss Mortensen.”  He pauses as he’s halfway out the door.  “And, though I will not expect you to feel the same way, I do feel somewhat more at ease now that I have you working alongside me once again.”  He closes the door behind himself without giving me a chance to rebut him.

I can only shake my head and curse my weakness.  How the hell can he say something like that and then not even give me the dignity of a retort or… I don’t know… some sort of a response.   I lie back down.  I’m not at all tired, and with the pain suppression of [Cyber-Sentinel’s Form], I’m not in need of any analgesics that might induce the same.  So I just lie down and stew in my thoughts as the only thing I really can do right now.

Several hours pass in nothing but the sterile light and dim hum of the fluorescent lights above before the door clicks open right around sunset.  This time, the face is far softer, and when her eyes meet mine, there’s no need to exchange words.  A quarter second later, she sprints across the tile floor and climbs into the hospital bed right next to me, clinging more tightly than she has in quite some time.  I’m still feeling a bit woozy from the radiation poisoning, so I just wrap my arm around her and smell her hair that— and I still don’t know how she does it— always smells so completely wonderful.

“I’m just… so happy to see that you’re still alive, Sera.  If something had happened to you, I don’t know what I would have done.”

I take a deep breath and continue to stroke Chloe’s back.  She’s not in the full plate she typically fights in, allowing me to push my touches into her skin and extremely toned back muscles.

Wisely, I decide against making a quip about ‘being extremely hard to kill’ or similar, even though it is the first thing that comes to my mind.  “I’m glad to be here with you, too.”

Chloe looks me over with glowing eyes of amber.  Her gaze narrows, and her head shakes involuntarily as a sigh escapes her lips.  She places a hand on me and casts [Greater Restoration].  Immediately, all nausea and traces of [Acute Radiation Poisoning] are purged from my system.

“I see you got another new spell to add to your growing repertoire.”

Chloe gives me the smuggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen on her face as she rubs her index finger around my chest.  “You see, love, you’re not the only person who passed her Level 96 threshold today.”

“Congratulations, Chloe.  Are you willing to share what classes you got?”

“I don’t know, Sera.  Are you?”

“They are called [The Sentinel of Humanity] and [Unraveler of Fates].”

“[The Sentinel of Humanity]?  With a ‘the’ and all?  For a being that was designed to destroy the System, you certainly do seem to get grand and powerful Classes.”

“The stat gains were too good to pass up.  Twelve points per level.”

Chloe gives me The Look.  “And I thought getting two classes that were each good for ten points a level was pretty exceptional.”

“Most of mine were nine.  I suspect that’s the baseline at this point, and getting higher than that reflects meeting qualifications for… I suppose, prestige Classes or whatever else one might call it.”

Chloe shrugs.  “Anyway, I took more or less the same classes I had before.  I had the option of an even more powerful Healer class than the one I took in [Apostle of Mercy].  I did consider it, but I decided I didn’t want to go down the path.  It would have asked too much of me, and all-but-prevented me from taking offensive abilities.  So I went with [Lady of Blades] and the less restrictive [Archsaintess of Light] instead.

“By the way, how did you get to Level 96?”

“I got just enough spillover Experience between my contribution to your fight with Claudius and my work keeping the barriers maintained that I crossed the threshold.”

“Wait…  Just casting a buffing spell and transferring a few points of [Ether]— thanks for that, by the way— was enough to get you to 96?”

“Well, there might have also been a [Giant Sky Serpent] who decided to cause trouble during the plane ride back to the States and needed to be put down.”

Wait… what?