Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 103: Interlude The Ants

Sometimes, people did things just because they’d gotten used to doing them a certain, even if the world had made it beyond unnecessary. For example, there might have been a few hundred people in the room, but each and every single one should have been able to easily pick out the voice of their respective conversation partners from the general cacophony, making talking at a normal level perfectly viable.

But they weren’t. Instead, everyone was trying to yell over everyone else, and with over two hundred people, each with enhanced lungs and therefore a very loud voice … it was a madhouse. Utterly insane.

Polizeirat Franz Habicht was truly fed up with this state of affairs. His [Aura] cracked like a whip, passing through the crowd and smacking everyone, affecting them for a brief second, before continuing on.

That seemed to have gotten people’s attention. Habicht sighed. His current rank of Polizeirat was several grades above his previous one of Polizeihauptmeister, and he’d only been promoted this highly because someone needed to be in charge of the anti-supernatural strike team, based on his experience with the supernatural and how he’d seemingly already adapted to the [System].

He’d have been happy just commanding GSG-13 but the powers that be had decided that he’d be in charge of the whole support structure surrounding it as well. Mind you, said support structure didn’t even exist yet, but he’d still been given the rank and said rank now meant he was in charge of this whole clusterfuck in front of him.

“People, I know we’re all stressed, but please use your inside voices.” He growled, making his voice reverberate around the room, scaring the hell out of several analysts. Still, it had gotten the point across rather nicely, hadn’t it?

Besides, they were hardly the only people who’d gotten startled today. The doorman of this building truly deserved a raise, after having to endure countless people arriving faster than the eye could follow and actually demand a form of identification from people who could turn him into pink mist with a flick of their wrist.

“You, what have you learned so far?” he demanded of the unfortunate woman who’d been standing closest to him. Someone had to make sure he was caught up, and he’d been out on a training trip when the information bomb had dropped, meaning he was very much out of the loop in regard to what the various analysts had figured out. And there were a lot of them, ranging from ‘his’ people, the ones who’d been working for him all along to a bunch of randos who’d eventually end up in the overall organization of the BAU, the Federal Agency for the Supernatural, including a certain spook Habicht had had an unfortunate run in with in the past.

“So far, we’ve been able to corroborate several different pieces of information about specific threats.” The analyst began cautiously.

Habicht flinched. He’d skimmed that ‘threat list’ on the way here, and it was a true horror show. Several different cults, each basically being a variation on the standard doomsday cult with a focus on the [System] were already bad enough, even if there wasn’t that much information to go on.

Then there were quite a few rather targeted accusations against organizations and in a couple of cases, individuals.

Plans for terrorist attacks involving Tier one circles being drawn on sheets of paper, charged, and dropped off on the intended victim’s stoop or in a larger building’s post office. Once the summoner got far enough away, the circles would trigger automatically, at which point the specifically chosen monsters would touch and detonate with building-wrecking force.

A nasty accusation of dangerous experiments involving using autonomous summoning as a form of mining being levied at a certain major mining conglomerate.

A different company, a logging company this time, was supposedly planning to spawn a bunch of wood monsters and let them replicate a bunch to later ‘harvest’ them all in the supposedly ‘empty of people’ area of the Amazon Rainforest.

Experiments involving the grafting of monster bits onto humans with, well, horrific results.

A half dozen, half-baked plans to drop monsters on foreign nations as a weapon of war. Apparently, that trick was going to end up getting declared a war soon enough, at least if the UN carried through, but then again, war crimes were committed for the purpose of expediency all the fucking time!

And then there was the additional issue of how people suspected the potion recipes had been discovered. Human experimentation? People who wouldn’t be missed getting kidnapped off the streets? And where the hell had all those illegal substances come from, given how many would have been required for experimentation?

It certainly hadn’t helped that some joker with an Illusionist [Class] had staged a scene just like that and ‘leaked’ pictures of it on the internet, with predictable results.

To top it all off, there was a pretty hard limit as to the consequences there could be for simply ‘posting pictures’, given that the jackass had never claimed they were real or made any allusions to them being connected to something else.

Still, Habicht knew having drawn the ire of every law enforcement officer and half the investigative reporters in the country was a nasty punishment in its own right.

Also, there was the small issue of all the illegal substances that had now vastly increased in value and all the crimes that would likely result from that. And it wouldn’t remain limited just to the crime of people buying illegal substances, but the power struggle in the criminal underground as people tried to gain a monopoly on the new hot commodities …

In other words, it was going to be one hell of a mess, and a mess he’d have to clean up at that.

His phone rang, the song ‘If It Bleeds We Can Kill It’ blasting out. He’d set that the ringtone for a particularly violent consultant, simply because it fit. Habicht sighed and held out a hand to pause the explanation being given to him by the consultant and picked up the phone, already dreading what fresh hell Isaac Thoma had just discovered.

“So, I already sent you a text about it and it’s on the university website, but I figured I’d call you directly to make sure you got it because it’s kind of important …”

“In that case, spit it out.” Habicht said, sighing internally.

“We checked the potion recipes, they work, and one of the world’s leading [Alchemists] said he can recognize the logic behind them.” Thoma said.

“Oh really? You were able to check all the recipes?” Habicht frowned.

“It’s truly ridiculous what you can find on a university campus with a [Skill] that tells you about everything that’s in it and how to find it.” Thoma said nonchalantly “My point is, at least part of the information in that release is true and has been verified.”

“Thanks. That’s good to know, I have to go now, though. See you around.” Habicht hung up, looked around and raised his voice “Everyone, I have confirmation that part of the information, namely, the potion recipes, are true. However, I’d like everyone to remember the concept of hiding a nugget of bullshit under a mountain of truth, so check everything.”

Then, as the noise crescendoed to heights it hadn’t even reached when he’d entered the room, he clapped his hands together hard enough to blow away some papers on a nearby desk and bellowed “Inside voices, everyone.”.

“Now, please, continue.” He asked the analyst at a more normal voice.

“One of the things we’ve noticed is that this release is outdated. It still lists the ‘Children of the [System]’ as an active and present threat, but they got stamped out weeks ago.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Habicht said, then took on a disappointed demeanor “Do you really think that’s the right approach to this, though? That when, as far as we know, a certain terrorist group has been destroyed and then they’re still declared a threat, it’s the other person that’s wrong? That it isn’t possible for us to have been incorrect when we assumed that we’d won? And that message was sent out to the entire world, who says that part was even referring to the groups that were already taken care of?”

The analyst blanched, and so did quite a few other people in earshot. Habicht swore internally. Some of the smartest people could turn into idiots in moments just because they were too damn impressed with their own intelligence.

… this was going to be a pain in the ass to deal with, wasn’t it?

***

There were many ways people had referred to Francesco Calise. Criminal. Mobster. A few dozen variations on ‘bad person’, asshole and ‘arrogant ass’.

And yes, that was a fair description of most people in his perception, but there was one thing that set him apart. In fact, he considered it to be his ‘superpower’, something he’d had even before the [System], and that was his enlightened self-interest.

Others decided to use their need to protect the dignity of their position to excuse brutal retaliation for disrespect, even when said disrespect had occurred in private and therefore not damaged anyone’s dignity. They reveled in their position, mistaking money for power, fear for respect, and thought that shooting the messenger was the same thing as taking care of the issue at hand. Oh, and then there were the issues of nepotism and all the messes that followed …

However, none of that bothered Calise though, and that made him one of the few people who could rationally deal with this steaming pile of crap that had been dumped in humanity’s collective lap. Some people needed to end up in the ground, and others merely needed to be convinced to not only amend their ways but also of the fact that it would be very obvious if they faked it.

A couple of hours after the information had appeared on the net, Mr. Holt had sent him a link to the website of some German university with the caption ‘IMPORTANT, READ BEFORE YOU MAKE ANY POTIONS’. First of all, the eggheads had demonstrated a lot more balls than he ever would have expected in even trying to make those potions, let alone actually drink them.

There was also an addition that would have been rather amusing to anyone but him.

‘Please do not use cocaine bought off the street as it may contain additions that react poorly in this situation’

It had been good to know that, but the information had been a little too late for one of his men, who’d tried to make a mana potion using some product he had on hand. He was now stuck with no natural mana regeneration for an undetermined period and had severe eyesight problems.

The crap people cut their product with was usually not or any more dangerous than the product itself, after all, dead customers couldn’t also be return customers … or maybe they could be, with the [System] and all, but given that no one knew just how to make that happen, that was besides the point. Anyway, the issue was that all the other crap that went into the product was normally not an issue, but it was now, and he was far enough down the production pipeline that very little of the stuff that made it to him was 100% pure.

The big advantage of knowing about that issue was that he knew what had caused the problem, and that he could now go ahead with the production of potions.

Now, he just had to convince his supplier of powdered sugar that no, he did not need the whole baking set, he just needed the sugar and yes, it did make a difference and there was no way in hell he wouldn’t notice because, oh, any ‘cake’ would come out toxic as hell, and that would sure as hell be noticeable, WOULDN’T IT?

And the problem persisted, well, that was one business relationship that would be ended on a permanentbasis.

Yet that entire clusterfuck hadn’t been the biggest part of the crapstorm created by that literal bomb masquerading as a bit of helpful information. No, that honor went to the issue of what some of his colleagues were up to.

You see, they might all be doing some seriously illegal shit, but there were limits.

Mind altering substances that the pansies in office didn’t allow people to have because they felt the ‘sheep’ would do something stupid under their influence? Sure, he and his colleagues would sell those, no problem.

But blowing up city hall or equally destructive actions were stupid, unproductive and bad for business. And according to that message, a few of Calise’s peers were on the cusp of conducting summonings that would be as destructive as the mother of all car bombs, aka the exact sort of thing anyone with half a brain knew not to do.

After all, they’d wreck shit that someone would have to fix, kill people for no clear gain and that would bring serious heat down on them and to top it all off, it would put a serious dampener on the idea of commercial summoning and that would hurt them all.

Therefore, it was time to have a discussion. Whether or not it was conducted with fists or words, well, that was up to the numbskulls playing with forces beyond their control, wasn’t it?

***

Three days later

Some people never got any appreciation for their work, not because others didn’t gain anything out what they did or because it was otherwise inconsequential, but simply because they didn’t know about it.

Jonathan Schmidt sighed as he got back to his work. The current state of the BAU meant he worked closely together with a bunch of people, many of whom were rather judgmental and acted like there was something inherently sinister about his work just because he couldn’t talk to them about it when really, all he did was boring data analysis. A certain, recently promoted Polizeirat came to mind.

Sure, he wasn’t supposed to have said data, but he was here to rid the world of terrorists, whether they wore suits and pretended to be heads of state or lunatics who camped out in the middle of nowhere, declaring themselves true believers or some such nonsense.

His current project, though, was a hell of a lot more public than his usual work. Someone had decided to rock the world by publishing a bunch of what would normally be considered very sensitive data, as well invaluable information about alchemy.

If the whole thing had merely been a prank, a bunch of data made to look nice and proper, that would have been bad enough. But this was real, substantiated information about people with some degree of power, influence or firepower, enough to cause real trouble.

And now, they needed to deal with that, something that would have been greatly helped if a certain field team commander would act on this information, rather than waiting for ironclad proof, completely notarized and even then, he’d probably want the Lord himself to descend from the heavens and put his seal of approval on the proof before that bastard got off his lazy ass.

Of course, that information drop had only been the first bomb. The second one had only struck the intelligence agencies, but it had been pretty terrifying nonetheless. Certain messages had been sent directly to certain junior employees with no rhyme or reason anyone could see because these people were practically nonentities. Maybe, these people would be someone of importance in a decade or two, but now? Had the person who’d sent the message somehow gotten his hands on the employee rosters of most of the world’s intelligence agencies and then picked the recipients by throwing darts at the rosters?

Still, each of the messages had called out specific agencies, pointing out the potential consequences of notacting upon the provided information, which would likely prompt them into acting, or at least so Schmidt assumed. He’d heard about a few of these messages, but dealing with them was the pejorative of foreign intelligence agencies and they didn’t make a habit of making their dealings public.

As for the origins of the message itself, they were … frustrating as all get out. The electronic trail had been easy to follow, almost stupidly so, the message had originated from an internet café in the Swiss city of Chur. But that was where that ended.

The systems of the café had been badly hashed by something, including some physical damage to some of the machines, so while the IP address had pointed directly to the internet café, that was all. They didn’t know when the message had been uploaded and even with the strongest [Skills] available to an intelligence agent at his second Evolution, including some that literally let them see things as they happened in the past, could see nothing.

In fact, the person who’d uploaded the message had so thoroughly hidden any trace of themselves that Schmidt was seriously questioning if the message had even been uploaded in Chur at all. After all, what if the amateurish cybersecurity had, in fact, been a brilliant false trail?

Regardless, had this been an old school spydrama, the residents of Chur would have gotten quite the eyeful. As it was, though, if even one of the locals had noticed something was off, the various spies, secret agents and spooks would have been very bad at their job.

As to how all that information had been gathered, well, there were many options, each more ludicrous than the last. A few of them were of the ‘crazy enough to maybe be true’ variety, especially given how the [System] had redefined the meaning of ‘impossible’ but even then, there were too many of them to truly investigate them all. If there was just one or maybe two of them, that could be investigated as a Hail Marry.

But over twenty, half which basically amounted to ‘this conspiracy theory might be true’? Hell no!

Cursing the bastard of an uploader under his breath, Schmidt continued his work.