“What do you want? You murderer!” Alexandra hissed. She had recovered gradually from the stun of the trauma, to a degree where she could begin to muster a tone of rage.

Seeing that Michael was glaring at him with an aggressive caution, and seeing that Jay was facing him in a half combat stance, Marcus Johnson said, “Look, if I wanted to imprison you guys, I could have just ordered the tanks to completely demolish this building and capture you four.”

“Why did you come here alone?” Derek questioned.

“To negotiate with you guys, like a peaceful man amidst the time of war.”

“You do realize that I am the leader here right? Whatever you want with the four people there, you go through me.”

“If you want to proclaim yourself as a hero here, I wouldn’t object with that,” Johnson’s voice carried a hint of satirical aloofness. “But hear me out. These four people are extremely crucial to ArtTech, and perhaps, the future of the URP.”

Michael gasped at the mention of URP. Derek and Jay completely froze at the word. Alexandra was unaware of the weight behind those three letters. Nicholas quickly picked up on people’s reactions and heightened his vigilance.

URP, the abbreviation of the United Republic of Peace, was the official name of the nation that Michael was living under. However, virtually no written record could be found on this term, except very brief and abstract definitions on encyclopedias. Michael wasn’t an expert on history, but he had heard stories about the fateful things that happened with this republic.

From what Michael knew, the two hundred nation states of the 2020s did not all choose to merge voluntarily. The United Republic of Peace was the catalyst, and sometimes the enforcer, of the merging process. From Jay and Derek’s response, Michael realized that he didn’t even know the full darkness of what the URP did to attain its goals.

But in a world where literally everything else was free speech, the censorship of URP was quickly neglected and forgotten. Politicians beta to use words like “we as a people” and “global government” to replace any mentioning of the URP.

“Explain,” Jay spoke coldly.

“Wait, before that, explain to us why you left those people there to kill each other,” Alexandra interjected.

“You probably know the reason as well,” Johnson spoke calmly. “It is not about protecting my corporation’s reputation; it is that I am trying to exactly prevent this status quo rom happening.”

“Perhaps if you haven’t let them all kill themselves, the people wouldn't have been so angry.”

“And how would I be able to expect a hacker breaking into our camera database to publish the footage? In fact, ArtTech is devoting full resources to find the real identity of the hacker.” Johnson did not try to conceal his suspicion at Michael’s team to be affiliated with the hacking.

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Johnson then went on explaining the story from the ArtTech perspective. According to him, he figured that Michael’s team was sent by the government when he saw the weapons they were carrying. He also realized that except for Jay, the other three had almost no combat experience. They must be special in their own ways, thus ArtTech decided to pull the four of them out.

“We were planning to just place you guys in the suite for a night and ask a few questions, but then the war broke out.”

Michael had several doubts about Johnson’s claim. If the war hadn’t happened and if his team hadn’t escaped, then Johnson would probably put them into an interrogation room.

“And what was ArtTech doing for the past few days?” Derek interrupted. “It doesn’t look like they are helping with the peacekeeping.”

“You know very well that you can’t solve this problem by force.”

How ironic, Michael thought, that Johnson was now advocating for a peaceful solution, when he was the head of possibly the most elite soldiers in the world.

“So how do you think having us could help?” Jay asked.

“The government’s intention, in fact, isn’t so different from ArtTech’s intentions. We all know that this day is going to come sooner or later. Everything had been brewing in this giant cauldron of URP, with the necessary ingredients of social inequality, fear and distrust, and the impending rumors of the Singularity, where once reached, all human beings will potentially be replaced by Artificial Intelligence”

Michael exchanged eye contact with Nicholas, who nodded to approve the validity of Johnson’s speech. The problem was that, whenever Johnson spoke, he always phrased everything in a matter-of-fact tone, and he used vague terms and general truths. Perhaps he was aware that Nicholas could read his expressions, or maybe he was just careful.

“About a week ago, ArtTech had found the same news report about the ‘abandoned missile silo’ with ‘crates of foreign cash’ and other crucial government inofrmation, and we have the same reaction as any other rational person — this report is absurd.”

Johnson used his bracelet to project the news report into a hologram.

“An abandoned missile silo base was found at the countryside (detailed coordinates pasted on the map below). The flags and badges in the silo vaguely indicated that this silo once belonged to the United States Marine Corps, a division of combat when military and individual nations still existed.

“‘I found it when I was hiking and got lost near the cliffs. I didn’t venture too far in, but I saw a lot of antique guns and ancient technology’ reported Mr. Bridges, the owner of the house and a current full time digital painter. What he didn’t mention but we saw were crates of foreign currency in forms of cash that were possibly seized from illegal parties, old redacted files with information regarding governmental cooperation with major corporations, and ancient-looking thumb drives and hard disks. Investigation of this location is absolutely necessary, and citizen journalism is highly encouraged.”

Michael immediately remembered it. This was the same news article he was reading when he was walking home that day, and then he bumped into the painter who almost shot him, and then he stumbled into a building where he was taken by Agent Amelia’s SWAT team, and then everything else happened. This news report broke the pattern of Michael’s daily routine. It was the spark for everything.

“In an age where fake news and fraudulent activities are prevalent, this news report just seems like some cheap, mindless prank. Everything in this report is vague and unrealistic, except for the out-of-place map coordinates given.

“For common laymen, this article would seem like a stupid prank only to be disregarded. However, anybody with a high degree of observance, like you, Mr. Livingstone, would notice that this article seemed to be a mere cover for something more important present at the coordinate. This article is like… an invitation.”

Michael’s own thoughts were interrupted at Johnson’s mention of his name. Why was Johnson specifically calling out his name? Did he know about Michael’s spatial talent? Did he know that Michael’s life had completely changed the moment he began reading this article?

Moreover, Mr. Michael Livingstone no longer existed, thanks to the superiors of Agent Amelia. The government had already announced the death of this identity. Michael was now more of a non-person at the government’s free disposal. However, Derek seemed not to notice anything wrong with the name. There were too many deaths nowadays for anybody to keep track of the names, and after all, who still bothered to care about the victim’s identities?

“However, this seems like a bigger plot. The creator of that article wants people to gather at that coordinate, and she doesn’t want any random person, but intellectuals who are able to deduce the oddity of this article.”

“How can you be certain it is a she?” Nicholas picked up the tiniest detail and spoke for the first time since Johnson walked into the room.

“We traced the publisher of the article and realized that the profile and the article itself were protected by a high-level encryption, meaning that we could neither read the detail information nor do any changes onto the news article. We couldn’t even delete it. We only found one pseudonym among the encryption, written there explicitly as if wishing to be found.

“The thing is, we found the same pseudonym in a file in our system after our camera footages were hacked and leaked. All we got is ‘Andromeda’”.