CHAPTER 56: The Army Arrives
“Adam, Honey, you need to wake up,” a soft voice said, leaning over his bed.
“Uh, mom. I’m still tired. I’ll take school off.” Adam squirmed in his bed, pulling up his cover and adjusting his pillow.
“I don’t think they would let you back in the school even if I was your mom,” said Abbey with a laugh. Adam’s eye snapped open and he looked around. The room was still dark, but other than Abbey standing at the edge of the bed no one else was around.
“Isn’t it the middle of the night?” he asked hesitantly. The digital clock showed that it was still 1:28.
She laughed again. “It’s the afternoon. Have them make a clock with a pm/am on it.”
Adam groaned and pulled his body to the edge of the massive bed. Last night had been the best sleep of his life. It wasn’t because of the ultra-luxurious room and bed he now was in. It also wasn’t because he had such a painful and difficult day, fighting the Testudinates, losing parts of his body repeatedly. Nor was it because the girls had all chosen to cling on to one of his limbs as they slept. The reason he slept so well was because he had opened his connection to everyone in their group and they had all slept in his penthouse condo.
The fear, pain, and anxiety that he had expected did come through the renewed connections. He was feeling those too. Trauma was a serious concern to Adam and he didn’t want his friends to suffer from it because of him. The feelings flowed from each person and into Adam, where they mixed together with his own. His anxiety, pain, and fear flowed back into everyone else in a small amount, showing them that even the strongest felt those emotions.
However, he also gave free reign to the confidence, trust, and pride in them. Those flowed back just as strongly as the negative emotions that entered Adam. This sharing as a group led to a level of intimacy between everyone that none of them imagined possible. Everyone felt that they belonged here. The negative emotions didn’t take them over, didn’t become a focus, as they were balanced out by the positive.
Adam didn’t watch anyone’s memories, but he did check their memory spaces and had verified that none of their recent memories had developed the spikey exterior like Brandon’s had before. Instead of a murky night of bad feelings, they had played video games, listened to music, enjoyed the pool and jacuzzi, and feasted on all the delivery food Adam had ordered. Other than Hickory, everyone else was able to build fun memories and emotions before sleeping.
“Anyway, Ron needs you at the front gate. Don’t worry, though, I made you breakfast,” Abbey said with a light kiss on his forehead.
“The usual?” Adam asked. She eyed him at the questions.
“Of course, the usual. Go eat and don’t keep him waiting.”
The usual was gallons of orange juice and everything in the fridge. In this case that included four and a half pizzas, about 30 leftover wings, and a tray of soggy nachos. They had constructed a second fridge for his penthouse just for the juice.
When Adam entered the living area of his penthouse, he noticed that it had already been cleaned up. The mattresses that had been brought in were gone, the trash that had littered the place was cleaned up. The floor gleamed as if it was brand new. The cleaning capabilities of the rift base was just so damn convenient.
After scarfing, gobbling, and guzzling his afternoon breakfast, with very little chewing, he rushed out of the penthouse and took the elevator to the ground floor. At the entrance to the building was a crowd of people. They were in several small groups, coordinating their activities and giving out tasks that needed to be done. Upon seeing Adam in the short gym shorts that he slept in, several people cat called him.
They all knew him from either the TV, meeting him in person, or the stories from his mom who was leading the groups. Plus, his physique was worth a few cat calls. Although a few people winced, looking at the scars that littered his face, neck, and body. Adam thought it quite odd that even though he had regenerated almost all of his skin yesterday, the scars stayed a part of it.
He gave the people a smile and wave.
“Adam!” his mother said as she turned from a group and looked disapprovingly at him. “Go put on some clothes.”
“Sorry, mom, no time,” he said as he gave her a hug. After a moment of her hands on hips she hugged him back. “Besides, I wore even less in front of the Testudinates yesterday.”
That earned some laughs from the crowds, most of which had watched the latest videos from yesterday’s fights. Ed must have edited out his genitals. Apparently, the editing was a lot faster when done through the Rift Menu instead of a human laptop. After having it absorb and recreate a computer, they were able to use most file formats and connectors.
“Well, please try to wear clothing from now on. I didn’t raise a nudist.”
“Yes, mom. I’ll probably get dressed once I find out what is appropriate for what Ron needs me to do. Don’t want to wreck clothes on another raid, or wear fighting clothes to a meeting.”
With that he gave one final wave to the crowd and exited the building.
A light jog for Adam, equivalent to a professional athlete’s sprint, was all it took for him to reach the Rift exit to the front of the warehouse. So much had changed inside the Rift in just a few days, with even more changing in the short time since taking control of the Testudinate Rift yesterday. It had immediately been linked to his network of Rifts. Apparently the Testudinate Rift was close to an underground water source.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
After they had seen the Rift expand to take in his team, Jordan figured out how to spend [System] coins to resize and reshape the Rifts. He did that to gain the water, setting up a small [System] designed water filtration plant using the materials they had on hand. Now they had running water in all the buildings in the Rift, which was a lot more than just their base high-rise.
There were currently 10 apartment buildings. The units weren’t as luxurious as the ones in their building, but they were still nice, he was told. Each apartment building had between 10 and 20 units of varying size on each floor, and they were all currently five floors high. It would be possible to enlarge them once more resources came in. A lot of people and families involved in all the preparations that were happening had already requested units. The police were especially quick to request homes here as a safety measure for their families.
Warehouses had been set up in the distance to hold all the supplies they were getting. An area close to the Sentinel’s building also had been designated for crafters, with a smithy currently billowing smoke out of its chimney, which quickly dissipated in the Rift pseudo-sky, as Garrett was over the moon experimenting with the Testudinate metal and Elf wood. Adam doubted that the blacksmith had slept much since getting the building.
Trucks and 4x4s were hauling trailers of supplies from the entrance and towards the warehouses, as the bustle of hundreds of people occurred throughout the Rift. A backup police station had been set up as well as a corporate building for participating businesses to have space to coordinate. Everything had come together so fast, and it gave hope to Adam that maybe at least his city would be able to weather the coming troubles.
“Adam!” Ron facepalmed as he saw Adam step out from the warehouse rift and into the real world. “Are pants too much to ask for?”
“Uh, sorry. Abbey said you needed me fast and she had to wake me up,” Adam looked around. All around them was activity going on with numerous trucks parked wherever there was space, people unloading them and moving them into the Rift. However, there was also a convoy that was quite unexpected.
Standing next to Ron, making sure they were out of the way of the people entering, was an older man, mid to upper 50s, wearing an Army uniform with lots of medals and insignias. He stood with the precision of a lifetime military man and exuded an air of authority. This man was used to people doing as he told them.
All down the road, Adam also saw long flatbed trucks with benches. Each truck was carrying between 10 to 20 men and women in fatigues. They each had a pack with them and weapons. Handguns were in holsters and rifles of different makes were propped on their shoulders.
“I bet you had enough time to eat,” grumbled Ron.
“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry,” Adam responded lamely.
“Hungry OR pant less,” responded Ron. A smile appeared and then disappeared on the military man’s face.
“I’ll admit, ‘General,’ that I’m used to being greeting with people fully dressed,” said the man, with an edge to the words.
“I heard those air quotes,” said Adam as he glared at the man. Then his face quickly dropped the glare as he didn’t actually care. He reached out his hand to the man. “Adam Clemens. The General title was something one of my team did on the fly in an interview, and now everyone locally and on the website refers to me as it. It keeps my real name out.”
The man shook his hands but seemed to think about something. “I’m Colonel Davian, US Army.”
With the handshake done, Adam took an obvious look at the line of soldier before speaking again. “Came for war?”
“Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On you, really.”
“I’d hate to have to harm your troops, Colonel,” Adam said stoically. “Humanity needs all the strength it can get.” He couldn’t keep his scary face from making an appearance.
Now a smile did crack the Colonel’s, though it was full of irony and froze a bit when he saw Adam’s glare. “Then let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Adam, calm down. We’re on the same side. Hostility isn’t necessary,” said Ron, a bit of tremor in his voice. Ron knew Adam wasn’t a hothead, but after what he had seen he didn’t think anything would get Adam to backdown if he didn’t want to. Even knowing all of that, the scary face still caused an instinctual reaction in him.
“Then Colonel, what did you come for?” Adam demanded.
“For now, we came for the open challenge that friend of yours declared on TV and your website. If we came for anything else, that will be for after the challenge.”
Without even hesitating, Adam nodded. “That’s fine. Just don’t try to play games with me. We should be in the upcoming war together, but I won’t put up with politics or betrayal. Come at me with honesty and I’ll respond in kind.”
“Alright, then honesty it’ll be,” said the Colonel.
He made a gesture to another man in a uniform, though with less medals. That man began giving orders to the sitting soldiers. Five of the soldiers were quick to get up and join the Colonel, while the rest lined up on the road. Adam noticed that two of the soldiers had a [2] next to their “Warrior” tag, and those two were glaring hard at him. It seemed the army did have some knowledge of the invaders then.
“This, gentlemen,” the Colonel addressed to his troops, “Is ‘The General.’” Soldiers leaned forward to get a good look at him. Well trained men, carrying enough weapons to easily take over the city, began muttering with a few laughs and smirks in there. One of the solders at level 2 seemed taken aback. He began to really glare at Adam.
“You are the General?” the soldier asked.
“Yes,” answered Adam, blankly meeting his eyes.
“Someone as small as you fights those monsters?” Adam just met the antagonistic soldier’s eyes. “At least you’ve some scars, but otherwise you don’t even look able to dress yourself.”
Without dropping eye contact, Adam shrugged. “I had a tough day yesterday.” Even focused on the soldier he noticed the Colonel watching him intently, not interfering with his own subordinate.
“And what is a rough day to a kid like you? Too much homework?” the man snarled.
“I had my skin and hair burned off, trice, lost most of my arm,” Adam raised his right arm and pointed to a scar ringing it. “I had all my fingers broken. I thought my team was dead, and then had to kill an army of Testudinates while naked. For me, clothes are optional.”
CONQUER! His skin was heating up and his soul bubbled as it cried out. Adam took a moment to push the compulsion down, even as he maintained eye contact with the now sweating soldier. Several other of the troops had unconsciously reached for their guns as they watched Adam radiating an increasingly threatening aura.
Adam broke the eye contact and the soldier gasped in relief. His menacing presence suddenly withdrawn, the troops realized where their hands were and put them behind their back.
Turning back to a surprised Colonel, Adam said impassively, “shall we go to the challenge? It looks like some people need to be put in their place.”