14 The Forbidden Zone (End)

A feeling of horror and despair erupted within the commander's heart as he desperately tried to contact Daniel through the Minerva system inside his mind. It was also at this moment of distraction that the spy manage to wriggle free from Eric's hold before immediately flying away as far as he could, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible.

It was only when the spy had managed to fly quite the distance away from the building's roof that Commander Eric realized his blunder when he found his hands feeling empty.

Glaring towards the spy in front of him, Eric gritted his teeth and growled at his target with seething anger, "You! You did this!"

At this time, he did not know whether or not the doctor or the teenager that he personally brought to this danger zone was alive. A feeling of guilt started to get mixed in with all the hatred for the person currently floating in front of him.

The spy simply tilted his head slightly, making the commander feel as though the former was gloating at him, before turning around and flying off towards a certain direction.

"Wait! Come back!" Eric subconsciously reached out his hand and shouted in a futile manner. It was also at this time that General Thomas managed to get connected back with Eric again.

"Eric, report your status!" Thomas shouted in a rather urgent manner the second their nano-chips were reconnected.

"General. I'm currently at coordinates XX.YY.ZZ. The target managed to slip from my grasp and is currently flying away from my location at my 4 o'clock." Eric immediately reported. Although he was still fuming on the inside, he was trained to answer to his superior officers automatically no matter how he felt at that time, so his report managed to flow from within his mind promptly.

"Acknowledged. I'm increasing the threat level of target to C. Let Minerva see through your eyes so it could guide the combat drone towards the target without any errors."

As Eric did as he's commanded, he couldn't help but ask, "General, is the doctor okay? What about the laboratory?"

"An antihydrogen mass of 0.0000001g was released within the laboratory, causing an explosion equivalent of that of a land attack missile. Due to the electromagnetic waves released because of the explosion, we are currently unable to contact anyone within the event horizon. However, based on the last known location of Truck #3 before it went offline, the vehicle containing the doctor should be far enough from the impact to mitigate any damages caused from the explosion." General Thomas explained in a matter-of-fact manner.

Only after hearing this did Eric heave a sigh or relief. After all, he would not be able to forgive himself for being the one to cause the death of the only son of his two deceased comrades. Though, he's still quite angry at himself for not trying harder to prevent Daniel from coming into the quarantine zone, he wouldn't even care if he were to get court-martialed for disobeying the doctor's orders if he were to know what was going to happen here.

At this moment, the spy seemed to be moving towards the direction of a river located right outside the quarantine zone, which had been his getaway destination all along. Unfortunately, since he had used up most of the fuel trying to push himself away from Commander Eric earlier, his altitude has been steadily dropping ever since he left the rooftop.

When he finally came into reaching distance of the river, he noticed something coming from behind him at an inhuman speed. When the spy turned his head back and saw what it was, his face couldn't help but contort to the point where his own mask became slightly twisted.

"Combat drone!" He thought in a panic within his mind. Without even considering whether or not there's enough fuel in his jetpack, the spy immediately increased his speed, trying to reach the river before the drone gets into shooting range. However, it was already too late.

Just when the spy thought he could make it, he had reached within the combat drone's shooting range. Since the spy's threat level have been raised, the general have already changed the goal of keeping the spy alive to 'dead or alive'. Thus, the combat drone did as it was instructed and started shooting bullets directly from its connected machine gun, shooting towards the spy's back.

At the very last moment, the spy instinctively removed the jetpack as the bullets arrived. As the bullets impacted against the remaining fuel inside of the jetpack, it exploded right behind the spy, serving as a propellent force as the explosion directly pushed the spy all the way towards the river below.

The spy made a hard impact against the surface of the river before sinking towards the bottom. After flying as fast as it could, the drone shot against the place where the spy had just landed but realized that it was useless. Not knowing whether the spy was still alive, the drone could only return to headquarters empty handed as Minerva and General Thomas looked on from above in disappointment.

***

When Daniel opened his eyes, he could hear a loud ringing noise echoing from deep within his mind. His vision was a little blurry at first, but it got better after Daniel shook his head a few times. He looked around and found himself completely flipped over along with the car, with the only thing preventing him from falling towards the ground being the seatbelt that is still holding against his waist tightly.

A sharp pain suddenly drilled into Daniel's forehead as though a nail is being hammered into him, making him too distracted to notice that one of the soldiers that had sat in front of him was gone, with the door next to him already forced open.

Since he had become temporarily deaf, he also could not hear the sound of someone forcing open the door beside him and only realized that someone was trying to rescue him when he suddenly found a light piercing through. It was only then that he tilted his head and found that the escaped soldier had already opened his door and was waving at him to come out while shouting at him.

Although Daniel had no idea what the soldier was saying, he still got the gist of it. He immediately unbuckled his seatbelt, instantly falling towards the bottom of the car that used to be the ceiling. The soldier saw this and reached in as Daniel reached out, grabbing onto armpits as the former lifted the latter out of the car in one go.

Daniel subconsciously took a look at the soldier before him and found the other covered in dirt, with soot all over his face. Blood was trickling from the side of the solder's forehead as the other started checking if there were injuries on Daniel's body. Only after making sure that Daniel was fine did the soldier give him an 'Okay' sign before proceeding to rescue the other passengers within the truck to safety.

While the soldier was busy rescuing the others, I subconsciously started walking slowly towards the laboratory, which currently looked like the site of a war film from WWIII. There were debris all over the place, from rocks to burnt pieces of clothing. He even found what looked to be the remains of human flesh as he stumbled towards ground zero. This realization made Daniel puke his guts out, emptying everything he ate since the morning.

When he finally recovered from the awful feeling within his heart, he continued, walking all the way up to the entrance of the building that used to be the site of the laboratory until stopping since it was impossible to go any further as the entire interior of the building was on fire.

Staring at the fire within in a daze, a torrent of emotions passed through Daniel's mind like a hurricane when he suddenly felt something grabbing against his ankle. Looking downward towards his feet, he found a middle-aged man currently grabbing on his leg as though he was grabbing onto his life.

Daniel stared and found the man's back completely charred black while blood kept on oozing out from its body. Some of his clothing have become fused into his charred skin, while nothing could be seen below the man's upper legs. The man stared at Daniel with desperation in his eyes, shouting something towards him.

As Daniel's ears were still ringing, he did not manage to get what the dying man was saying. It was then that he noticed the man holding out a bottle filled with an unknown substance with his other hand. From the intense glare on the man's eyes, Daniel seemed to have understood what the man meant and reached down to grab the bottle.

When the man saw Daniel placing the bottle inside his pants pocket, he finally loosened his hold on Daniel's leg. His eyes dimmed before slumping downwards toward the ground. Just like that, the man was dead.