Coleridge did as instructed, creating another set of earth stairs so Isaac could descend from the church roof. The wooden building shuddered as he did so - not only did the bell tear a hole through its roof, but the belltower had collapsed in on itself in a fiery, multiple-rocket-powered explosion. By the time Isaac made it back down to the courtyard, a steady blaze had started to spread along the roof. For destroying a church, Isaac offered a silent prayer of apology to the Skyfather; just a couple of months ago he would’ve felt ashamed by such an act of blasphemy, but being in several life-or-death situations by now had sort of turned his religious morality on its head.
In any case, the sirens of once-distant firetrucks now closed in on the street, which meant that both the church fire would be dealt with and the situation on the avenue was presumably under control. The courtyard itself was certainly under control - though Coleridge’s sand wall now appeared broken, scorched, and riddled with bullet holes, it had held long enough for the officer to defeat his opponents with streaks and waves of earth. The majority of the opponents had been incapacitated, not killed, but these blunt-trauma attacks. Coleridge, though his hands trembled, went to check on the bodies, only for an alarmed Isaac to reach out and grip him by the shoulder, pulling him away.
Isaac didn’t need to explain to the bewildered Coleridge - the bodies did it for him. Just like with the attacker on the Naval Police admin building, all of their opponents’ pupils turned a jet black color as they enlarged and covered the entirety of their eyes. Coleridge yelped and reinforced his battered wall as red streaks ran up and down the bodies, activating the charms hidden beneath their clothes. There was a flash and bright streak of orange as the bodies exploded in unison, splattering a splash of blood across the wall.
The Atalantan Restorationist Front was allegedly responsible for the attack on the building in the base, Isaac reflected. And these guys use the same method of keeping their members silent. But I didn’t hear a whole lot of Atalantan accents here - most of them were Lawrencite.
Puzzled by the conundrum facing him, Isaac turned and tilted his head toward the street. “Let’s help mop up out there. See if we can take anyone alive.”
With a nervous nod, a shaky Coleridge followed Isaac out of the courtyard. They took a few shortcuts down side streets to get back to the main avenue slightly faster. Along the way, they passed by more signs of devastation: blown-out, burning storefronts, scattered bodies on bloody cobblestones, hidden cries and whimpers. In the distance, the sounds of fighting were winding down, and Isaac crossed paths with several police patrols. The sight of the men in black uniforms sent chills down Isaac’s spine - all police organizations within Arcadia had been incorporated into the State Police, and all those officers were required to sign an oath of loyalty to Chief Amien or get booted off the force.
Perhaps abruptly reducing the size of police forces makes attacks like this possible. Not that the papers would ever talk about it.
But, so wrapped up in dealing with a terrorist attack and its aftermath, the officers only glanced in Isaac’s direction as he walked confidently and with purpose (and nudged Coleridge along). Despite the act, he swallowed when he crossed the avenue because the Armed State Police were out in force. Their helmets and body armor were colored as black as the winter night sky as they swept the area for any remaining terrorists. Isaac watched in horror as a patrol surrounded a heavily wounded terrorist. Already, the terrorists’ pupils were jet black - the explosion came a moment later, sending several Asps to the ground in dazes and death throes. Other patrols started shooting wounded terrorists; the majority of the attackers were already dead by this point, with several corpses now riddled with light machine gun bullets to make sure.
Fortunately, the woman he wanted to see was still alive. Reed smoked a cigarette with WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT written in her scrawl across the side, sitting on a half-broken park bench. Her eyes looked deep in thought. A prone man groaned and laid by the side of the bench, half-strewn across the grass, half-strewn across the stone walkway - the Zhanghai samurai from earlier. He writhed in pain, one hand completely cut off, the other hanging from his arm just by a thin strip of flesh.
“Get away from him!” Isaac called out. “He’s gonna explode!”
Reed exhaled through her nostrils, the smoke spreading around her like a dragon. “I don’t think so,” she said. “If he was gonna explode, it would’ve been after I defeated him. But I’ve been talking to him.”
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“I fought in the defense of the Dai Hong estate,” the samurai suddenly said in a clipped Zhanghai accent. Isaac paused, staring at the man, keeping his distance. Behind the bench, a good distance away, there were more bodies of terrorists - Isaac couldn’t tell if they were dead or not, but they looked immobile.
The samurai had a thin mustache and his eyes appeared strained behind his goggles. A bloody streak ran up one of his legs - he wouldn’t be getting up any time soon. He stared at Isaac for a moment. “I recognize you as well. To think, we fought as allies for a brief moment, only to end up like this.”
“How’d you escape the estate?” Isaac asked. “I thought everyone who evacuated ended up joining the 1st Zhanghai Cultivator Marine Regiment.”
The samurai spat at the name. “Serve the country that kicked us out? Never. But I was tired of everything Zhanghai, too. All the hierarchy, all the orders and pulling rank and being treated as inferior just because I hailed from a poorer province in the homeland. Stuck in this rotten country, I decided to forge my own destiny. To find freedom!”
Reed raised an eyebrow. “By taking part in a terrorist attack?”
The samurai laughed. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But that doesn’t matter to me. The job paid well, so I took it. Isn’t that the very nature of your country? Seeking to strike it big, accumulate as much wealth as possible?”
“We don’t do it by killing innocents,” Isaac answered.
That earned him a crooked smile and tilted his head. “Is that so?”
Upon seeing a vehicle enter the street before the State Police could finish its roadblock, Reed took one last drag from her cigarette and tossed it away. “Alright, buddy, we got a Cultivator Marine truck coming in. You can answer more questions on the way.”
Isaac tensed himself, expecting the usual explosion, but the samurai just grinned. “For the right price, I might.”
That’s when the scattered bodies in the park rose. These men and women, blood streaking down them from scattered, fatal wounds, paid no attention to the fact that they should've been dead and sprinted in a stampede toward the samurai. Their pupils were entirely black and red energy flared from the hidden charms, but the explosions didn’t come yet - they ran like puppets on marionettes, wildly, arms trailing behind them, moist groans escaping their slack jaws. Isaac had never seen anything like it before, an army of the dead, and it was enough to make him hesitate. Just for a moment.
But it was enough to doom the samurai. Reed sent out a soundwave that sliced through several of the puppets, but the mass kept moving, forcing her to retreat out onto the avenue, taking Isaac and the hapless Coleridge along with her. The samurai reached out with his stump as the dead terrorists leapt onto him, roaring in a frenzy. Isaac fully expected them to eat him, such was the intensity of their rage, but they instead activated their charms in a great electric storm of red and exploded in unison.
The three Naval cultivators watched the carnage with a stupefied look. A dark gash in the grass and pulpy remains were all that was left of the samurai and the stampede of terrorists that should've been dead.
“You can only use cultivation when you’re alive,” Coleridge mumbled with a numb tone. “Only when you’re alive, only when you’re alive.”
Reed wiped the blood off her face and smoked another cigarette. Isaac tried to comprehend the events he had just witnessed, but his mind simply swirled and swirled, his thoughts unable to come together.
Just what the hell is going on?
He wasn’t the only one concerned. The Naval truck parked and a few Cultivator Marines emerged from it. They brought the big guns with them - Osip himself led the squadron, and they made a beeline for the trio of naval cultivators. As they did so, plains-clothes Naval Police operatives emerged from their cover as well, looking to collect Coleridge. On top of all that, a swarm of State Police officers and Asps converged on the site of the explosion. There would be a three-way collision, with Isaac right in the center, and from the looks on everyone’s faces, the bloodshed might continue, this time as a civil war among the service branches.
That’s when a long black limousine emerged down the avenue. The car was far too sleek to be an Arcadian model - perhaps it was a seized Zhanghai vehicle. In any case, it looked incredibly official, no doubt carrying someone incredibly high-ranking. The limousine was unmarked, though, so Isaac couldn’t decipher its branch.
The car pulled right up to the curb, drawing everyone’s attention to it. The door opened right as the limo stopped, and that’s when Isaac felt it again - the unnatural silence, a primordial sense of fear. A flock of pigeons flew overhead, and the water in the garden’s fountains kept flowing, but everyone besides Isaac was now frozen in place. Even Osip, with this thick head like a pumpkin and all that power, couldn’t move a muscle. Or rather - he didn’t even know he was frozen. Reed, too, had been looking at the car, and now seized up entirely. Ash fell from her burning cigarette, smoke wafting from her open mouth.
Isaac readied himself. A woman emerged from the car, and he found himself face-to-face with the Mind once again.