Time Square Militarized Zone

“Recall all unit members. No more press tours for the foreseeable future,” Captain Brett Cooper told First Lieutenant Gutierrez, who was now in charge of all communications between his team and the public.

“Yes, sir. Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Powers has requested your presence in the lab tent.”

“Understood. I’ll head over right away. Gutierrez, let me know when my team gets here.”

After running background checks on the entire team, Brett Cooper had met with each person personally with Lieutenant Colonel Powers and First Lieutenant Gutierrez in tow. Knowing that they might be pulled into the tower again, they had all agreed to join his team and receive the full backing of the American military. As soon as they joined, however, they were required to go on a press tour to both appease the populace and display the potential power of the United States for the rest of the world to see. It was a flex so that other powered and foreign agents didn’t get any ideas about attacking America.

For that reason, none aside from Cooper were in New York when the tower released the red blast the previous night. For Brett, now that the tower had activated, it was time to shut down the circus and get his team training together.

He left Lieutenant Gutierrez with orders to get his team assembled and headed for Doctor Klamp’s lab tent.

When he walked in, he saw only Klamp and Powers talking. None of the lab assistants were there.

“What’s the situation?” Cooper asked while saluting Powers.

“Unknown,” Klamp responded without missing a beat. “Last night’s event took us all by surprise, and the fact that you or seemingly anyone has not been pulled into the tower yet is even more strange. We can assume, however, that maybe it was a warning of sorts. It’s possible that it is letting participants know they’ll be going back soon.”

“That’s very kind of it,” Cooper responded wryly.

“We don’t know what’ll happen, Captain Cooper, but your team should be ready for deployment at a moment’s notice.”

“I’ve already told Gutierrez to get everyone back here, sir. We’ll start training as soon as they arrive. Has the gym been built?”

Gym was how it was known colloquially, but the military had commissioned a secret, state-of-the-art training facility for Cooper’s team. It was being built offsite to maintain both secrecy and privacy.

“Almost. It should at least be ready for use within the week. Not everything will be functional, but it’ll give you and your team a large space to train away from prying eyes,” Powers said.

“Good. I’ll let them rest a day after getting here. We’ll be training until we get pulled or until something else happens.”

“Very well. That’ll also give our good doctor here the chance of collecting samples from your team since none of them have actually been to the base before.”

“Yes! I would very much like to run tests on all of them. I’m wondering if different powers affect people in different ways, and if so, are we able to control what kind of powers potential new powered will get? There’s so much I don’t know because I’ve only worked on two samples so far. Yours, Captain, and Justin Lynch’s.”

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Cooper winced at Justin’s name. He didn’t know if he felt guilty for him dying, or for the soldiers that died in Justin’s attack. In any case, it wasn’t a name he liked hearing all that often. Something about the way Klamp spoke also irked him. Klamp was brilliant, but it was also true that he viewed everything like a question. Were they even people to him?

“Just don’t treat them like rats, doctor. They won’t like it and they are much stronger than you.”

“Quite, quite! Sorry, captain. My enthusiasm takes the better of my manners sometimes,” Klamp had grown accustomed to apologizing for his behavior. He knew that the action allowed him to push even further in his work because people felt more at ease around him if he apologized. “Now,” he continued. “Your tests are phenomenal, captain. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the strongest man in the world, by old standards that is. It’s possible for other powered to be at your level as well. Fortunately, with your extensive training and experience, I believe you’d overcome anyone at this point.”

Cooper felt Klamp was praising him too much, but even so, in his own mind he agreed with the doctor. He felt that he would be able to take on anyone given the chance. That said, in the back of his mind a single sentence rang out when he thought like that, Someone else survived.

Despite the government’s best efforts, they hadn’t been able to locate the last survivor of the tower. There hadn’t been any abnormal activity anywhere. Whoever had survived was actively not engaging in behavior that would raise suspicion, which was even more suspicious to him.

He didn’t know what to think, but he knew he had to prepare for the eventuality of meeting the last survivor. That said, something else was on his mind.

“Lieutenant Colonel Powers, my family. Should something happen to me in there, I hope you honor our agreement.”

“Of course, soldier,” Powers replied.

Powers was a hardened man, and he took the lives of his people very seriously. When they had to explain the situation to Lisa Cooper over dinner after Brett’s reenlistment, Powers promised the entire Cooper family that their safety would be a priority to him, and it would remain so even should the worst happen to Brett.

Lisa did not want to leave their family home for a bunker somewhere, and Powers assured her that that would not be necessary. They would keep the home under surveillance, one of Gutierrez’s subordinates would handle that, and an emergency tactical team would be on standby should surveillance sound the alarm. The only immediate physical change would be the soldiers stationed at the gate.

In Powers’ mind, however, he knew that the need for that protection would eventually fade. Should Captain Brett Cooper return from the tower ever more powerful, nobody in the world in their right mind would go after his family. It would essentially be a death sentence. For now, he was happy to oblige Cooper’s simple demand if it meant Cooper joining him.

Meanwhile, Gutierrez was scrambling to get a hold of everybody in Cooper’s team. The powered couldn’t return on regular flights, so he told their army escorts to lead them to the nearest military base. Some were traveling together, which made that part easier, but some were traveling alone. In any case, all of them would be brought to New York in different military aircraft. NYC had become a no-fly zone for commercial aircraft. JFK and LaGuardia were non-operational, so Gutierrez had the military flights assigned to land at LaGuardia since it was much smaller than JFK, meaning it was easier to control access to the terminal. Newark was still operational since it was located in New Jersey, so Gutierrez had to coordinate the flights with its control tower so as to avoid any in-air accidents. He instructed Newark personnel to use a vague maintenance delay to keep planes on the ground during the arrival of Cooper’s team.

The logistics of it all was extremely demanding, but Gutierrez never felt overwhelmed. He was one of the best intelligence officers in the military, and he still carried the guilt of being caught unawares in the attack on the base.

The air in the base was much tenser and heavier. The soldiers had started to grow accustomed to living in the NY base, but the sudden change in the tower brought them all back to reality, and like it or not, some of them started dreading the idea of being pulled into the tower. Cooper had joined the soldiers at the mess most nights since he arrived and told them stories of the inside of the tower, of death and monsters, and of powers beyond human comprehension. The younger soldiers all had sounded excited at the possibility of power then, but things had become more vivid now, and a lot of them had already seen plenty of death in action. None of them were green, but the amount of death Cooper had spoken of was something that had started to gnaw at them. Would they survive like him or would they join the ranks of the corpses?

Now that the tower had come to life even if for a brief moment, they weren’t sure they wanted to find out.