Memories surfaced unbidden as his legs guided him through familiar pathways. With every step, he remembered Donald's psychological warfare designed to break minds rather than bodies.
Arthur paused outside the dorm building where they'd kept him under surveillance. The building stood as it is, the same as before, without any change to it.
Inside a hidden military control point.
Sergeant stared at his monitoring equipment as proximity alarms shrieked through the underground facility. His eyes had detected the anomaly moments before automated systems confirmed the impossible.
He actually came back. The monster has come back!
Multiple screens displayed the figure walking through Installation Seven's abandoned corridors.
Black hair, black eyes, and most importantly, the face that had dominated every briefing for the past week.
Arthur Fate. In the flesh.
The sergeant's hands trembled as he reached for the secure communication device. The red phone that connected directly to General Hawthorne's personal line.
This is above my pay grade.
The connection was established immediately, encrypted protocols ensuring absolute privacy.
"Sir, Arthur Fate is there! What are your commands?"
Hawthorne's voice carried deadly intensity. "Do you see him? Are you sure it's him? You cannot get this wrong!"
Hawthorne's seriousness was not for nothing. If the sergeant had mistaken Arthur Fate for another person or demon who had wandered into the base, the military would lose millions of dollars of preparation for this moment and, most importantly, they would lose a chance to eliminate the biggest threat to their existence.
The sergeant suddenly felt that the weight of national security was placed in his hands, in a single identification.
The sergeant's eyes tracked the figure on multiple high-quality camera angles, biometric scanners confirming identity with certainty.
"Yes, sir, I'm sure it's him. He's currently walking around the main corridors, no mask, making no attempt at concealment. Furthermore, the reports of a dragon being related to Arthur's fate are indeed correct; a large dragon is currently accompanying him, circling around the air."
He is moving like he wants us to know he's there.
Hawthorne's pause stretched across encrypted channels like held breath. When he spoke again, his voice carried the finality of ultimate decisions.
"Activate all the MOABs we've installed immediately. I want him to become ash! No—I want him erased from existence!"
MOAB's the strongest bombs outside the nuclear option. A single bomb is known to yield 11 tonnes of TNT; the amount placed in the base would evaporate anyone in the vicinity.
There was enough explosive force to level mountains. Yet they were all deployed against a single individual...Arthur Fate.
The sergeant's hand moved toward the activation panel, his emotional control training carrying him through protocols that would have many rethink their involvement before doing.
No going back. No second chances.
The panel glowed red as targeting systems locked onto Installation Seven's coordinates. Warheads designed to eliminate entire military divisions prepared for deployment against impossible targets.
He's not even trying to run.
On the surveillance monitors, Arthur continued his leisurely walk through the base that had once held him prisoner. His expression carried melancholy that spoke of old wounds reopened rather than fear of approaching annihilation.
Does he know? Can he know?
The sergeant's finger hovered over the final activation button as sweat beaded despite the cold, cool air coming from the air conditioner.
Ten seconds to change the world.
"Fire everything," Hawthorne's voice crackled through the comm. "Send that monster straight to hell, where he belongs."
The sergeant's mind responded to training that overrode moral consideration.
He pressed the button.
The activation sequence engaged with precision. Targeting systems locked onto Installation Seven's coordinates. In the desert facility, bomb bay doors opened with deadly purpose.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast detonated with the force of eleven tons of TNT compressed into a single moment of absolute destruction. The explosion erupted like a miniature sun being born, temperatures reaching levels that vaporised steel instantly.
The most powerful non-nuclear weapon in America's arsenal was being used to kill a male in his teens, approaching the age of sixteen years old.
The blast wave expanded at supersonic speed, creating a pressure front that crushed everything in its path. Concrete walls that had withstood decades collapsed like paper houses. Reinforced steel beams twisted into abstract sculptures before disintegrating completely.
The sergeant stared at his monitoring equipment as every camera feed dissolved into static. Seismic sensors registered an earthquake that hadn't existed moments before. Radiation detectors remained mercifully silent—this wasn't nuclear devastation, just conventional explosives applied on impossible scales.
Dear God. What have I done?
His hands shook as the magnitude of what he had unleashed crashed over him in waves. The tactical calculations his enhanced mind had been suppressing suddenly demanded attention. Breaking out at once, without waiting for his brain-washed mind to react.
"Oh god, if this had been Manhattan..." he whispered to the empty command bunker.
The numbers. Focus on the numbers. Don't think about the bodies. He thought immediately. People in his line of work were always told to think about the numbers, not the bodies.
They were trained to lack emotion in these sorts of scenarios, so that once the need arrived, they would do it without feeling any sort of guilt, eliminating the chance for backing up at critical moments.
Other variables, such as enemy dehumanisations and various other things, also came into play.
"Seven hundred meters radius," Sergeant muttered, his voice cracking. "That's all of Lower Manhattan. Gone. Just... gone."
His enhanced perception painted vivid scenarios that made bile rise in his throat.
"Wall Street. One World Trade Center. Everything south of City Hall." The words came faster now, hysteria creeping into his composure. "Tens of thousands dead in the first microsecond. No warning. No evacuation."
The sergeant's mind forced him to continue the assessment despite his mounting horror.
"Two kilometers out. That's... that's most of Manhattan south of Central Park." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge—all gone. The subway tunnels would collapse. The Hudson River would flood everything."
"Four to five kilometres." Sergeant stared at readouts that painted pictures of impossible destruction. "Brooklyn. Jersey City. Parts of the Bronx. Windows shattering simultaneously. High-rises pancaking from the pressure wave."
"And we just used this on one man." The words escaped before conscious thought could stop them. "One fucking person."
What kind of monster requires that level of firepower?