Chapter 53: A God Made of Steel, Part 7

Many people died without realizing what was happening. In one moment, they existed, and the next, they didn't. No prior warning, no pain, but also no time for goodbyes. No time to make amends with their gods, for anything. There was no better display of the arbitrary cruelty of existence.

Others witnessed the nuclear mushroom rise in the midst of hell and knew that they would likely die too, but it would be a slow death. They were the lucky ones, although soon they wouldn't feel that way, at least for having a chance at survival. The opportunity to fight for their lives.

A nuclear bomb detonated in the middle of San Francisco. Humanity had spent so much time worrying about threats from beyond the stars that it seemed there were no other dangers. But even before the appearance of those monsters, the fact that the world had come close to ending in a nuclear hell had become a thing of the past. Now it was the present, the reality for hundreds of thousands of people.

Evacuation had started long before the explosion due to the giant robot, but it wasn't easy to escape the consequences of a nuclear bomb detonation. That was the key word, consequences. The detonation was the least of it, but it was hell in itself.

For example, Joseph Gage crawled out of the ruins of his vehicle. The vehicle had rolled over several times, and he miraculously survived. He could feel the wound on his head, blood flowing, sticking his hair to his forehead and obstructing his vision. But miraculously or not, he was alive, and that's what counted. Thank God, he thought. He also thought, better thank Him after getting out of here, just in case thanking Him was for a job well done.

He had God as a co-pilot; fortunately, he only had to worry about his own neck. No family or friends. Not in this city, anyway. It no longer looked like the city where he had spent the last five years for a crappy job that paid too well to ignore. The sky was a dark red, tainted by the black smoke of hundreds of fires and dust clouds carried by the wind, the largest of them forming a mushroom shape in the center of the devastation.

Joseph knew perfectly well what this was about, but he didn't want to admit it, as if denying it would make it less real. As if the world didn't give a damn about what he believed or didn't believe and would simply keep rolling on when he was no longer there.

(It seems that will be very soon, want to bet?)

It seemed like a city, no, a completely different world. I must have ended up here by some mistake, he thought. I've never been a saint, but I've always tried to be good. He admitted that he had hurt other people, but you couldn't go through life without hurting anyone.

Maybe celestial rules were inflexible, and that's why he had ended up here. Lost and alone. His head throbbing like a second heart. His vision tinted red. Adrift like a leaf in the wind.

He saw one of the buildings that now passed for skyscrapers collapse, and he saw the dust it had become being swept away by the winds. He could almost feel the radioactive poison spreading through his body. With something between a sob and a laugh escaping his throat repeatedly like a repeated recording, he turned around and ran along the shattered highway. He turned his back on hell and everything he had known, but deep down, he accepted that the distance his feet covered was merely symbolic. Sooner or later, he would be dead, and in those depths, he begged God to make it soon because he couldn't bear the torture lasting so long. He had seen enough photos and reports, he knew very well what awaited him, knew very well that he wouldn't have time to find shelter in less than half an hour. And he couldn't bear it. Plain and simple. He couldn't.

For example, Julia Mybeck watched from the ground as the mushroom cloud grew and felt neither terror nor despair, only relief because the screams had stopped. Now she was the only living being in the park. The adult woman had lasted longer than the children, which was somewhat expected in a way and a greater tragedy in another. Children shouldn't die, and certainly not like this, but now she didn't care. She couldn't care. Breathing in the black smoke, dust, and radiation.

Dissolving.

Her last thoughts were towards her mother. Perhaps it was too much to call it a thought. Rather a condensed impression of her feelings, an image.

Fleeting as her own existence.

For example, George Baker drove himself and his family just far enough away in the car to feel the pain before being abruptly erased from the face of the earth. Only a flaming shell remained of the car, and of them, not even dust. The dense black smoke continued to rise towards the heart of the heavens.

For example, many more. Hundreds of thousands of small tragedies that meant nothing and would not be written in any history book. Entire worlds summarized and reduced to a single sentence. A nuclear bomb was detonated, and there were hundreds of thousands of casualties.

***

Sylvester opened his eyes, vaguely aware that he must have lost consciousness, even if only for a few seconds. Yes, how and why? He scratched the fog of memory until he found the answer. The explosion. The giant robot had exploded. Roman had chosen to take them all down since their survival was no longer possible in any case.

But he had failed. Heather had deployed a black barrier, saving even Ryan and Cynthia. Although he doubted she cared a damn about what happened to them. The barrier wasn't made of the crystal that Heather and her weapons were, it was a transparent blackness, through which he could perfectly see what San Francisco had turned into.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The black smoke and dust clouds did nothing to hide the horror, nothing at all.

I've failed to protect not one but two cities already, he thought. What kind of hero am I?

They had defeated one of the Champions of the invading universe, and his last ace in the hole had not worked because it hadn't killed a single one of the main targets, but it was impossible to see any of this as a victory. The life-and-death combat between universes was distant and unreal compared to the devastation spread before their eyes.

There were no words for it, so he wouldn't even try to choose any. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and felt as if a piece of his soul had flown away with the cold air.

"It's not your fault," Heather said, still holding him tightly. Refusing to let go, even though she had seen that he was already conscious.

He appreciated the attempt to console him; he hadn't expected it from her. However...

"Of course, it's my fault."

He wasn't going to give up or do anything stupid, knowing that the entire universe depended on his life in the most literal sense possible; Heather, Cynthia, and he were the only ones holding it together. So hiding from the truth was pointless.

It was his fault.

He could have done better, but he hadn't. He had screwed up.

That was all.

"Be reasonable," Heather insisted. "When you pulled him out of the flames, he felt the need to boast in his last moments. Just because of that, I realized what was going to happen. If not for you, all of us would be dead."

"It might be. But it's not about that." A pause, more to avoid sounding too harsh than anything else. "Let me go."

She did.

"Shut up for once," Cynthia said, pale. "We have to get out of here. Quickly. And get help."

"No one would overlook a damn nuclear bomb," he whispered. "And we, we're already here. The radiation would probably affect even extraordinary humans like you or Sylvester, but right now, I'm not human. I think nothing would happen to me. I can go help. I want to go help, and I imagine... How was it, Heather? I imagine she has to stay here to maintain this barrier."

"Me too," Sylvester said, "but if you bring them in here, then..."

"Can't she split the barrier in half? That way, there'll be space for some people. We can't save everyone, but..." He swallowed. It was a peculiar gesture in such a large creature that barely fit into the barrier.

"I can do it," Heather said, and she demonstrated it immediately, splitting it perfectly in half.

"Thank you."

The Lunar Remnants were their enemies, and Heather, the Lunar Princess, was the ultimate Remnant. But the harbingers of the end of the world had turned out to be others; they hadn't even existed in this world. So there were other priorities. Not just now, while saving everyone they could, but even afterwards. The nature of war had changed forever. They would never be enemies again because they were on the same boat.

Ryan left the barrier without fear. Or at least without expressing his fear. He had said that the radiation shouldn't affect him, but, of course, that was an unfounded assumption. They hadn't had the chance to subject any Remnant to nuclear radiation, but each one of them was different, so nothing could be guaranteed.

Anyway, Ryan wasn't aware of that line of research at all; he was going blind.

The target marker appeared again as he watched Ryan explore the ruins of San Francisco for people he could save.

Not just one marker. Dozens.

Mission: What's Left

Description: Save the survivors near you.

Reward: A fleeting feeling of satisfaction.

Consequences of failure: Strengthen the conviction that you are also a plague on this world.

Well.

The reward was crap, and the consequences of failure...

Well, they were correct. That was all he could say.

Anyway, this was another newly discovered aspect of his powers. The icon had helped him find the way out of that nightmare monster's innards, so he wasn't just going crazy. He had to take advantage of it.

"Ryan, listen to me. Look under that car. There's a person under it."

Ryan flipped it over easily, of course, as if it were a toy. His eyes widened.

"How did you know?"

"Does it matter? But I'll explain later."

"It's true, it doesn't matter."

Survivors saved: 1/50

Saved? Had that woman been saved just because they had found her? Was his still mysterious power in a position to know who would live and die so easily? How could he be sure of that?

He hoped he was right, that everything would be so easy.

Of course, he did.

He just wanted to save people. He had no special desires or hidden impulses. That was the only thing he had intended to do from the beginning. So, if his power was right, so be it. He was desperate for good news.

However, it worried him.

It not only pleased him, it sent a shiver down his spine. How could he know he would survive? How could he know?

"There are fifty in total around here. Fifty people we can save."

"Fifty?" Heather repeated. "Well, I don't know how long I can hold this barrier. If it doesn't last until you get us out of the city..."

"I'll test my luck."

"Sylvester, if you insist, I won't argue. But think for a moment. With what we know, if you die here, you will significantly reduce the chances of this universe. Saving fifty people won't matter if that way, you condemn billions. Every blade of grass."

She wasn't wrong.

He didn't have to like what he heard, but she wasn't wrong.

"I can't look away."

"What are you talking about exactly?" Cynthia asked.

Heather explained what they had heard from Roman.

"I see. And that's why I have these powers, I'm the third. I almost regret asking. What a responsibility."

Yes.

They didn't have the luxury of looking away, of hoping others would fight and resolve this for them. Sylvester never had it. But he admired Cynthia because she did. She could have lived a perfectly normal life and still took the step forward.

Each and every agent of the Syndicate, normal people who had gotten into this hell unnecessarily, were braver than him.

Courage wasn't needed when you were practically untouchable.

Ryan saved everyone he could.

Everyone he could but not everyone.

Heather warned that the barrier was weakening. That they were running out of time, and they had no choice but to leave. It wasn't just a matter of their lives now. If they messed up, the people they had saved so far would have no chance. The barrier had to hold until they left the area, and that's why they had no other option.

Sylvester couldn't look away.

But he had to.

Heather set things in motion. The barrier moved with them, in the midst of the irradiated hell that San Francisco had been reduced to.

Sylvester regretted saying the exact number of survivors. That way, everyone but Ryan had an exact idea of how many people they could have saved but let die, no matter how much sense the decision made, how inevitable it was.

The notification appeared on the screen.

Mission failed.

Yes, you don't need to tell me.

A God Made of Steel, Part 7: FIN