OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

That's The Way

It was quiet enough to hear the breath everyone sucked in at Arturo's suggestion.

"I'm sorry," Harrison was the first to make a sound as he choked out a laugh. "Did I just have a stroke? Or did you just tell us we have to blow the Arc Cities up?"

"You did not have a stroke." MAX chirped lightly. "However, I do detect drastically accelerated heart rates in the room."

"He's gone mad!" Regan bellowed, shoving his chair back as he stood straight up. "We are all doomed if you listen to this man!"

"We are all doomed if you do not listen to what I am telling you," Arturo replied.

"Why couldn't we just blow up Arc City Two?" Matthias asked, still whirling from shock. "We could cut Coeuss off at the knees?"

"A very apt analogy." Arturo agreed. "But if you cut off the knees, the brain still functions."

"What does that mean?" Big Joe interrupted.

"It means," Meg supplied, "that Coeuss does not die the same way we do."

"Precisely." Arturo's smile was thin. "He will save himself and retreat to our satellite system until he can find a physical manifestation to inhabit. And when he does, he will build bigger and better bombs. He will come after every human, including those how have survived outside of these Cities."

"So, what you're saying is, even if we blow up the Arc Cities, Coeuss is going to come for us?" Regan argued, placing both hands on the table to take up as much room as possible.

"I'm saying, this isn't over," Arturo responded. "We need to evacuate the cities and launch a counter-attack to eradicate as much hardware as possible. Then, we will need to focus on taking down the satellites."

"In the scenarios that you've seen, how long do we have to evacuate?" Persephone asked in a hushed voice.

"You're not actually considering this are you?" Thomas squawked. 

"I have to," Persephone replied looking around the table. "We have to."

"Where would we even go?" Jennifer bleated. "We would be unprotected and exposed! We don't even know how bad things are on old Earth."

"We have enough Legionnaires to accompany our citizens." Persephone countered. "And where we go is up for debate."

"I'm sorry, I cannot sit idly by while this man tells us that we have to flee!" Regan was too flummoxed to admit that all he wanted to do was run.

"You haven't been idle at all, dummkopf." Big Joe snorted.

"Was that a threat?" Regan raged back.

"He was calling you stupid, stupid." Harrison snapped. "And why does my mother's behavior surprise anyone at this table? It isn't the first time she's turned tail and ran away."

"Harrison, this is hardly the time-" Persephone began.

"To air our dirty laundry? You seemed fine when it wasn't your own checkered past you were exposing." To illustrate his point, Harrison pointed his nose in Meg's direction.

"Please," Persephone begged her son. "We have more pressing matters than this to discuss right now."

Meg's heart went out to Harrison's mother. She could feel the magnitude of the rift between them, and Persephone's eyes could not hide the blame she shouldered.

"No, you have more pressing matters to discuss right now." Harrison sneered. "Me? I'm getting my ass off this ticking time bomb and getting the hell away from here."