Published at 12th of August 2022 9:16 pm

Book 2: Chapter 110: Business As Usual

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

One month after the UT Massacre and Gregoir’s battle with Coldeyes, the APD was hacked. Unedited footage from Gregoir’s body camera was posted to a dozen different online forums, covering his pursuit of Coldeyes from beginning to end. This video included the infamous villain admitting that he’d never spoken to Champion, nor did he believe that Champion was still alive. Echo was mentioned by name, and Coldeyes had clearly considered him to be in charge of the People. It was essentially verbal confirmation of the government’s position on the People, and by a member of the opposition no less.

The internet labeled it a hoax and a false flag attack within the hour. Conspiracy theorists had a field day picking apart stray pixels and audio bugs, while the APD scrambled to figure out how their servers had been compromised. Several local politicians called upon Gregoir to testify to the truth of these events, and some lunatic started an online petition to allow Coldeyes himself to be publicly interviewed on the matter. It garnered two-hundred thousand signatures in three days.

The political divide that Cornelius had spoken of was growing more obvious by the day. The People were being hunted without success all across the country, even while the average citizen’s opinion on them fluctuated wildly. Legislation had been floated on a state level to reduce the power of the Vigilante Acts, while others proposed removing them entirely in favor of something new. Some politicians spoke of harsher restrictions on Naturals, things like tracking devices in addition to the already mandatory registration. A few extremists suggested outright drafting Naturals into federal service, though that idea had yet to gain much ground.

Dan considered it all to be very much not his problem. The trends were worrying, but what could he do? He kept an eye on events in the background mostly as a morbid hobby. He wondered what it was like for someone living in Germany in the early 30’s, watching Hitler’s rise to power. He wondered if it felt at all the same as this. He wondered if they’d already passed that point long ago, and somehow nobody had noticed. Then, he shrugged and went back to rebuilding his life.

It was easier that way.

His delivery business was humming along nicely. He stuck mostly with construction jobs, as there were more than enough to hold his attention and materials were scarce. Dan had purchased a twenty-foot utility trailer that essentially served as a prop for his power. For some incomprehensible reason, people were faster to accept his ability to move massive amounts of material so long as they first had to load it onto an elevated platform.

The human mind was a strange thing.

Abby continued with her work at the rehab clinic. She’d seen Cornelius three times in the past week, and the veteran officer was adapting to his new limbs with startling speed. Nobody at the clinic had tried to murder the man so far, but it had apparently been a near thing once or twice. Cornelius had gleefully reported to Abby that someone had attempted to slash his tires, only to discover that his civilian car used the same reinforced tires as a police cruiser. The burst of pressurized air had apparently snapped the thin blade in half, burying it into the concrete parking lot. Cornelius had turned it into a necklace and now swaggered around with it openly slung around his neck because there was no way for that to horribly backfire.

Eh, he’d probably be fine.

Dan’s other friends were busy with their own projects. Connor and Gregoir were working furiously on some sort of community outreach program. The logistics alone of such a thing were a tremendous obstacle, given that the APD had rarely interacted with the citizens it was meant to protect. The majority of the department consisted of legacy officers, young men and women following the path of their parents or grandparents. Their educations had been mostly privatized, with exclusive preparatory schools becoming the standard of recruitment.

It was Freya’s idea to update the Police Academy. The institution was in shambles, underfunded and underrepresented in the department. Few people attended for the general training programs that it offered. The Academy’s traffic was mostly from specific supplementary courses, and attendance wavered depending on the year and the teacher. It was a complete failure in its intended function, that being a way for people outside of the existing APD community to be recruited into it. Rather than separate the wheat from the chaff, the building acted as an unintentional, yet colossal, obstruction for those interested in joining law enforcement without any inside contacts.

Gregoir wanted to fix it, but that was easier said than done. Funding was an issue, as was simple public awareness. Beyond those things, was the general sense of superiority that pervaded the APD. The police were better than the average citizen, otherwise they wouldn’t be police. Standards were high, and everyone knew it. It was baked into their culture, at this point. It wasn’t something that could be waved away; it was something that would take generations to fade. The Academy, though, would be a good place to start.

So life progressed. Focused on his own responsibilities, Dan managed to forget the general anarchy facing the nation. Worries became more trivial, more immediate things. What to eat for dinner, where to take Abby on a date, why is the heat not working, or why is the garage door stuck? Little not-problems that only the lucky could complain about. Dan enjoyed a blissful few weeks of this, and the world faded into the background.

Then a Category 5 hurricane spontaneously erupted over Galveston Island, and Dan was called up as a first responder.

Dan appeared in the parking lot of a sprawling football stadium, his lips still tingling from Abby’s farewell kiss. He was almost immediately swept off his feet by a curtain of rain and wind. The downpour could only be described as torrential. Visibility was arms-length at best. The power was out across the city, and the absolute darkness was cut only by the blinding flashes of lightning. Crackling bolts danced across the skyline, accompanied by rumbling, rolling thunder.

The wind howled like a banshee, ripping at his thick jacket and dragging on the canvas bag slung across his back. His hood whipped wildly against his head as the wind spiraled in every possible direction. Dan pulled it down tight, steadying himself against the violent gusts and the slippery concrete. He could see a dim glow in the distance, where the stadium’s emergency lights fought to penetrate the thick layers of rain.

Dan trekked forward, arms wrapped right around himself as he was violently battered by the active hurricane. The briefing area should be within the stadium. He’d been told almost nothing so far, other than to assume that he’d be working under hurricane conditions. Dan was one of the few volunteers who could navigate in this mess mostly without issue, and he’d be one of the first to arrive.

Galveston was a city with maybe fifty thousand people in residence. The number of crisis volunteers in that pool was already critically low. The city mostly relied on imports from the nearby city of Houston to shore up any crisis they might face, but in these conditions that was a problem. More volunteers would be arriving by car, but they would be trickling in at a snail’s pace. For now, Galveston was stuck with the locals, and people like Dan.

Another violent gust of wind nearly took Dan off his feet. This was only the edge of Hurricane Victor. The violent mass of wind and rain was pushing slowly inland, having formed in the Gulf of Mexico over the course of a single hour. Wind readings closer to the heart of the storm were reaching as high as 165 miles per hour, and that number was slowly climbing. In another hour, it might be too risky for Dan to teleport out in the open like this.

He finally caught sight of the stadium entrance, and willed himself into cover. He appeared behind a pair of glass doors, reinforced by stainless steel shutters. The screaming wind immediately fell into the background, still loud but no longer all-consuming. The doors rattled behind him and water dripped off Dan’s every surface, but he trudged willingly forward.

Dan had been instructed to meet at the stadium floor, on what was normally a football field. This particular stadium was modular in nature, used for a variety of events, and had been reconfigured to serve as a shelter. Dan had taken the slower approach, wanting to get a feel for the situation outside before getting an assignment. Having faced the torrential rain and violent winds, he was no longer as confident in his ability to move freely.

He rounded the corner and found the stadium entrance. A man in an orange vest spotted him immediately, and Dan closed the distance in a blink. The volunteer barely flinched at the display. Instead, he looked down at his clipboard, scribbled something, then asked, “You the teleporter?”

“Daniel Newman,” Dan acknowledged. “Where do you need me?”

“Briefing room,” the man replied, pointing his pen at a small podium surrounded by chairs. Several more volunteers occupied said chairs, while a man in a suit spoke from the podium. Dan willed himself across the stadium, and into a seat. The speaker noticed him, but his speech continued without a hitch.

“-can’t wait for reinforcements, I’m afraid. Emergency services are already out on the street, directing people to shelter. There isn’t time for an evacuation before Victor makes landfall, so we simply have to prepare the best we can in the interim.”

One of the volunteers raised their hand. “What about the source? Who’s dealing with that? You can’t possibly expect us to believe this is a normal hurricane!”

“The mayor has been… reluctant to call upon federal aid, given recent events,” the speaker answered diplomatically. “Galveston has a small police department, and we mostly deal with robberies and white-collar crime. We are not equipped for a threat of this nature.”

“What does that mean?” the volunteer pressed.

The speaker tugged at his collar, and reluctantly answered, “Sadly, if a human is the source of this hurricane, it may be some time before we see things resolved.”

“And in the meantime, we just risk running into a villain?” another volunteer asked.

“That is what you’ve been called upon for,” the speaker admitted.

Nobody seemed satisfied with that response. There was some uncomfortable muttering, but everyone remained in their seats.

“Yes, well, ahem.” The speaker cleared his throat. He clicked a small remote in his hand, and a map of Galveston projected itself in the air beside him. “Back to the task at hand.”

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