"...And that's what I saw, Ajax. What do you think?"
Ajax has listened to Dzan's version of events. He looks over at the three apartment buildings that Dzan had pointed out to him.
Three different groups entered the three buildings.
"When… When exactly did they go into those three buildings? Was it… right when the bomb went off?"
"Yeah, Ajax. Right then." Dzan confirms. Sigvor looks at Ajax with a slightly cautious expression. The expression on Ajax's face right now fills him with slight apprehension.
Ajax’s teeth are grit, his eyes trembling. Whatever Dzan had told him made Ajax realize something important, something truly crucial. What that "something" is, Sigvor has no idea.
However, he does get a bad feeling not just from this situation, but from Ajax’s current state of mind. He looks as if he’s on the verge of doing something drastic.
"And Dzan, give me an estimate… How many people went into each building?" Ajax asks, his eyes no longer trembling.
"I honestly couldn’t tell from where I was looking. Sigvor personally guesses at least ten.”
“How did you come up with that guess, Sigvor?” Ajax asks, curious.
“Well… I saw how many were waiting in the two smaller crowds. There were at least thirty or forty people originally. I saw the number shrink by about ten, maybe fifteen. So, my guess was that at least ten people from each of those two crowds used the bomb as an opportunity to leave the crowds and break into the buildings.” Sigvor offers, slightly hesitant about her theory the more she speaks.
“I’m also guessing, ten people from the crowd of a hundred and fifty also entered their building through all the commotion. Did you notice any of that?” Sigvor asks.
“I… I didn’t. I was too focused on… No, never mind. Then, what about the fourth building of the apartment complex? Nobody went in there?"
"We were right next to that one, nobody besides us were even gathered in front of there. I would have seen people breaking in that close up." Dzan says.
"Nobody at all was gathered in front of it, yeah." Sigvor confirms. "It does look vaguely asymmetric, doesn't it, as if it's a loose end. Why did they enter only the three buildings and not the fourth one, you know?"
Ajax takes a single deep breath at the new information he has received. Then, applying every bit of excess energy still within his body, Ajax activates his bullet time to a degree that he has never tried to earlier. He moves his eyes to look at Dzan, then at Sigvor. Both of them look like they're talking, moving, even blinking, much slower now.
He has succeeded in slowing down his perception by 15x. So now, one second of “real time” is equivalent to fifteen seconds in his own mind.
However, conversely, his body's response has not adjusted. He notices that there is short yet noticeable lag whenever he sends a command to his limbs to move. Even darting his eyes between Sigvor and Dzan felt like there is a slow internet connection between his mind and the avatar he is using right now. Except, the avatar in question is his real body.
Having bought himself some crucial thinking time, he can piece together the options that he has left now. Dzan and Sigvor's information proved quite crucial to his understanding of the situation, like a missing puzzle piece that solved the image. Rather than dwelling on the tragedy he failed to prevent earlier, he can focus on the tragedy that he still has a chance of stopping.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
He was right.
This “small” terrorist attack wasn't the end of it.
There is something else being planned. Something that could result in many more people being killed. The earlier fire was launched in the midst of human supremacists. Yet, this one could be affecting many more innocent demihumans.
For the moment, he puts away all of his fear, his anxiety, his terror, and his sloth.
He gathers all the pieces of information he has to formulate a working theory of the current situation. The first thing he realizes is that the nameless woman's distraction was an attempt to allow those three groups to access the three apartment buildings.
Those three groups might each have similar fire weapons. If Sigvor are right about ten people entering each building, then it is certainly possible, in the worst case, that each of those people can turn into fire bombs at the drop of a hat. If ten of those fire bombs went off in a single building, they could melt the building’s load bearing structures, its beams and pillars. Easily.
In the worst case, all three buildings will collapse, hundreds of demihumans will die and their homes will be destroyed. They will burn to death at first before being crushed by the rubble of their own homes. Their lives will be snuffed out. Men, women, and children this time. People completely unaffiliated with the conflict at Maz square.
Their lives will end.
So, in the end, if each of the ten terrorists entering each building can turn into human bombs, then they could each choose to explode at whatever moment they decide. The moment he tries to openly confront them, he could freeze one, two, maybe up to five of them. But at some point, one of the leftovers could activate their bomb before Ajax could drain them of their heat.
But, there is a workaround to this dilemma. If Ajax is able to absorb enough energy, he cannot say for certain that he cannot increase his body's speed by 15x, just as he did with his reaction speed.
If he can manage it, he could move faster than any of them could react. If he takes the first five by surprise, the next ones would be a cakewalk, especially with the energy he takes from them. That woman he killed was teeming with the power necessary to move faster than he’s ever moved before.
If the first five or so he kills have the same level of energy then… All he has to do is absorb their energy and freeze them solid. Even if they somehow regain their original temperature, the incendiary fluid that their bodies have become will be inert.
Ajax remembers how he froze that woman and prevented her from blowing up. When the second person blew up successfully, the newly generated heat in the area was able to return her frozen corpse to a warmer temperature. However, several minutes have passed and the chunks of her corpse did not explode or catch fire again.
This told Ajax that freezing their bodies just once was enough to stop the threat of a napalm-type event taking place randomly or well after the fact. Though, he’d better remove all the fragments of their bodies after he manages to neutralize every last one of them, just to be safe.
So, Ajax’s current plan is to freeze all the individuals participating with the terrorist group to death. That being said… is there no possible way to not have to kill them? Right now, he doesn't regret killing that woman in the slightest. She was about to explode and kill a lot of people. Her death was necessary and he had already resolved himself to put her to death.
He would not regret such a choice. Not now.
Yet, would he have to do the same to at least thirty other individuals? It is possible that there are individuals amongst the thirty who haven't made themselves into bombs. Those individuals do not have to be killed, do they?
The only problem is that he doesn't know how to verify who has made themselves into a bomb and who hasn't.
What if he wants to get information from them about their intent, their ideology or whether there are others like them who haven't come to this planned terrorist attack today, but have their own events planned? That information could be vital. Yet, he can’t let go of the worst case.
In the worst case, all of them are bombs. All of them will attempt to die in a manner that takes as many demihuman lives as possible.
Sigh…
So, then where is his choice? If he wanted to not have to personally kill thirty people, did he have that choice? Could others besides him catch the thirty individuals before they blew themselves up? No. He could not call Shaula over with a guarantee that she would come over as quickly as possible.
He could not rely on people slower than him either, because they could trigger explosions by confronting the ten people within a single building with no plan. He had to go to each building and kill all thirty of them by his own hand, through his own freezing power, with the speed that only he could exhibit.
He has no choice in the matter.