Player Reload
Chapter 244 - 224 Aquaman

Chapter 244: Chapter 224 Aquaman

Angel City is located on a Pacific island, linked to the Los Angeles metropolitan area by a three-thousand-meter-long sea bridge.

In an apartment building adjacent to the entrance of the bridge, an employee of Vanguard Company sipped his cheap instant coffee before sitting back down in a window seat, picked up his binoculars to continue monitoring the vehicles on the bridge, and casually chatted with a colleague about the football game they watched yesterday.

As a junior staffer, he wasn’t privy to what was actually happening, aware only that his superiors attached great importance to it, having dispatched quite a few people over from headquarters.

"Man, I was there yesterday, that quarterback from the Eagles got hit so hard, nearly got paralyzed. Could’ve ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life."

He animatedly recounted the scenes from the game, taking a good while before he noticed his colleague signaling him with his eyes. He promptly shut his mouth, cautiously glancing to the side.

In the corner of the room, the bald guy who claimed to be Professor N, sat in a wheelchair, suited up, with his eyes closed, deep in thought.

He certainly heard the conversation between the two ordinary folks, along with words like "paralysis" and "wheelchair,"

But as the leader of the mutants, Professor N was always magnanimous. How could he be petty?

He simply planted a mental suggestion that they would develop depression, mania, split personality, and other mental illnesses in ten days.

’Even a nigger’s got a temper.’ Professor N thought to himself, continuing to use his spiritual power to scan and detect the vehicles below.

Angel City was at sea, so if that Superpower User wanted to take Caroline and Angelica into Angel City, there were only four ways.

High-altitude parachute jump, a high-altitude breakthrough, traveling across the sea bridge by car, or crossing the sea by boat.

On every possible route, there was a Vanguard Company squad, or several, lying in wait to ensure absolute security in the final two hours before the deadline.

Buzz buzz—

The employee who was drinking coffee suddenly felt his phone in his shirt pocket vibrate intensely. Glancing at it, his eyes went wide.

[Emergency Alert]

[A ballistic missile flying over from the Pacific Ocean is approaching the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Please proceed to the nearest shelter immediately. This is not a drill.]

Before the employee could put his coffee down, other phones in the room began to ring with piercing tones.

Nearly everyone’s phone in the entire apartment building, those drivers waiting at the bridge entrance, and throughout the whole city, received the same message.

"What’s going on?"

"Is this some kind of joke?"

Drivers and pedestrians exchanged glances, at a loss for what to do for a moment.

The television station, which was playing commercials, suddenly inserted a black and white caption in the name of the United States government, issuing an emergency alert;

All email inboxes within the Los Angeles metropolitan area received the same message;

Electronic traffic signs by the roadside changed color, displaying directions to the nearest subway stations and underground parking lots that served as shelters;

"Damn, it’s an AMBER alert!"

One of the pedestrians was the first to react, crying out, "The text is real! The missile is coming!"

The AMBER alert, short for America’s Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response, is a nationwide alert system—initially set up to deal with child abduction cases—if a child abduction occurs and certain criteria are met.

The United States emergency alert system EAS would send out alerts to Ordinary people in the abduction area through radio, television, email, texts, and social networking platforms.

Because of the effectiveness of AMBER, this system was also used for terrorist attacks, kidnappings, mass shootings, and other serious violent crimes, as well as for natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes.

(There is a similar ’Reunion’ system domestically)

A text message about an incoming missile could be a false alarm, but cross-checking through so many channels like broadcast, television, email makes it unlikely to be fake news.

After a short delay, pedestrians on the streets finally snapped to their senses.

Chaos swept across the city instantly.

Some broke out in a sweat, their hands trembling as they opened Google Maps and madly dashed towards the nearest underground parking lot;

Some knocked down strangers with a punch, seized motorcycles, or bicycles as a means of escape;

Some cried out for their fathers and mothers, making a last video call to their loved ones;

Others felt a sense of relief upon receiving the text. They calmly walked up to their much-despised boss, smacked him, and gave him the finger as a parting gift;

Some took a clever approach, rushing towards the north of the city—since the ballistic missile was coming from the Pacific Ocean, it could only be from North Korea, Russia, or the Eastern Giant, and the latter two had consulates in Los Angeles.

Surely, the missile wouldn’t blow up its own consulate?

"What?!"

On a pure white helium airship, Cervantes’s eyes widened as he looked down at the suddenly chaotic city traffic through the window.

A full day had passed since the escape of the Superpower User in the suburbs of Denver. Only two hours remained of the 48-hour deadline.

During this time, Cervantes had been on high alert, wary of the player across from him. Now that the shoe had dropped, he felt relieved.

"Any nuclear strike launched by a major country always prioritizes the enemy’s nuclear facilities, political centers, armament factories, military bases, ports, and only then move on to major cities.

By comparison, Los Angeles ranks too low in priority, and places like Washington not receiving the message proves the entire alert is a sham. It’s man-made."

Cervantes’s mind raced, "The United States Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA! That player invaded FEMA!"

The headquarters of FEMA is located in Washington, and they have offices throughout the United States.

The player didn’t need to truly threaten the entire city; as long as they took control of the Los Angeles FEMA office, or even just hacked the network, they could skip a lot of steps. By using pre-set procedures, they could issue a false alarm to the whole city and create massive chaos.

And his intention was clear: fish in troubled waters.

"The alarm is false, don’t panic, hold your positions, the Superpower User is coming soon."

Cervantes shouted in the communication channel, but his words only reached the people of Vanguard Company.

The city was plunged into even greater traffic congestion and chaos, and under all the surveillance cameras, everyone was running aimlessly, impossible to identify any suspicious individuals.

"Shit."

Cervantes cursed in line with local customs, took a deep breath, and said on the broadcast channel, "Professor N, it’s up to you now."

"Hmm."

The black hard-boiled egg nodded, lit a marijuana cigarette with a lighter, took a deep breath, and began to meditate.

The original Professor X from X-Men could locate and control any person’s mind in any corner of Earth.

This version, the black hard-boiled egg Professor N altered by old imprints, naturally couldn’t do something as miraculous as Professor X. What he could do was to find relatively calm minds amid the chaos of the entire city.

The whole process wasn’t smooth; an onslaught of chaotic thoughts flooded into Professor N’s mind, causing his brain to overload and his nostrils to bleed.

He could sense that high-ranking officials of the Los Angeles government were hiding in underground shelters to the degree that no one went to verify with the FEMA office in Los Angeles;

He could sense people crying, confessing, regretting, and pleading in the extremely crowded subway stations and parking lots;

He even sensed a pair of biological siblings embracing, with the thought of "since the nuclear bomb is coming, and we’re all going to die, why not enjoy ourselves before death," um, it’s also unknown how these two will get along after the false alarm is debunked.

Moving past these minds, Professor N finally found several suspicious targets approaching the cross-sea bridge from different directions.

One of them was less than five hundred meters away from him.

"Under the sea! There’s a mental fluctuation deep underwater!"

Professor N abruptly opened his eyes, disregarded the blood from his nose, quickly grabbed a tablet computer, and marked the coordinates on the map.

Cervantes pursed his lips, as expected, the other side wanted to create chaos in the city to cover their surprise attack.

If that’s the case...

He turned his head and looked at a burly man with a beard wearing Nordic armor, "Thunder God Thor, it’s your turn to act."

"Hmm."

The bearded burly man nodded; he was a fourth-level Superpower User in the Thunder System, transformed by old imprints.

Because old imprints could only alter the human body itself and couldn’t create equipment, what he was wearing was a COSPLAY costume hastily bought from a costume convention, and the hammer in his hand wasn’t the Thunder God’s Hammer,

but a... goat-horn hammer for nailing planks.

Never mind how out of place this goat-horn hammer looked, in any case, "Thor" opened the hatch, leaped down, and shining with dazzling thunder and lightning, swung his hammer the moment he touched the sea surface.

Zzzap—

Rolling thunder plunged into the not-so-deep nearshore sea, illuminating the murky waters.

A figure was struck by the thunder, leaped out from the seabed.

He was a handsome middle-aged man, drenched in a suit, with a rose pinned on his chest.

"I am the son of Odin, king of Asgard, guardian and heir to the Immortal Palace—Thunder God Thor, who are you?" the Thunder God holding the goat-horn hammer, half-submerged in water, spoke in a heavy tone.

The man in the suit stood upon the water and brushed back his hair, "I’m Aquaman."

Aquaman? Doesn’t look like it, you’re too skinny, and where’s your Trident?

It seems Thor was puzzled, and Aquaman, sensing this, pulled an address book out of his pocket, filled with a string of names.

[Wendy, Chicago, 22 years old and single, nightclub DJ, occasionally up for a date]

[Pella, Seattle, 34 years old and married, husband goes on a trip to Europe every summer]

[Yuliy, San Francisco, 19 years old, fond of skiing, poetry, and photography]

Behind every string of names were phone numbers and specific addresses.

Damn, this Aquaman, huh?!