55 Crossroad

"Who's your friend? Maybe we can help," Waller finally let out a sigh of relief. Thank god it wasn't something like "You killed my parents" or "you stole my girlfriend". Of course, he wasn't completely genuine about the offer. If an opportunity arises in the future, he would for sure recruit this boy through capturing first, or kill him. He understands the risk of having such a talented innovator roam freely, and a threat must be nipped in the bud.

"Earlier today, we were all taken to this police station, and he was taken out of the cell and sent somewhere," Jay replied, a bit nervous.

"I see. I will be honest with you. He was probably detected through blood test to be an innovator. Your innovator blood is of higher tier, and that's probably why you weren't taken as well. But don't worry, Nexus will take good care of your friend. Right now we are in an apocalypse, and we had to gather all the help we can to restore peace to this country. You understand, right?" Waller put down his weapon and tried to appear as genuine as possible. "We would love to have you onboard too. We need men like you, an-"

"Where is he right now?" Jay didn't buy the sweet talk at all. He's no longer a kid that's naive enough to think that everyone working for the government are good. He rather not be entangled in this deep water and be used as a pawn. Right now, he only trusts himself and his family.

"Here, I will try to contact my colleague that should be handling the transport right now, let's see how they are doing," Waller pulled out a tablet. To Jay's surprise, they were also using the Nirvana tablet.

However, when this guy scrolled through his contact list, he was stunned.

Beside the name - Whalen, the status circle shows grey. Based on past experience, Waller knew what the circle color meant. If it was green, that means the contact is in good condition; yellow means the contact's injured, red means the contact's health is in critical condition, and grey means death, where the system no longer detects any life signal from the target. For instance, the circle beside Kitzu on his contact list was already grey, and so was his deputy squad captain.

As a soldier, although he was used to seeing death every day, he was still quite shocked by everything that happened today.

After a brief silence, Waller opened his mouth. "Do you have your buddy added on your Nirvana app?"

"Yeah."

"Go to your contact list, and tell me which color is the circle behind his name."

Jay cautious took out the tablet as he kept an eye on Waller.

"Green."

Waller let out a sigh. Things like this happen too often. Newly-awakened innovators would be captured and be sent on their way back to Nexus HQ, other organizations could ambush them on their route to snatch the package. Judging by the current situation, the Whalen squad responsible for transporting the package was ambushed and killed.

"If it's green, that means your buddy is alive. But, he's not in our hands right now, because the squad sent by our organization to transport him was annihilated." Then, Waller also briefly explained what each color meant for the circle behind each contact's name.

"But where is him right now?"

Just then, Waller's two back-ups arrived behind him, and they all stared intently into the smoke, preparing for any sudden attack.

"I won't be able to help you anymore, your friend is no longer in our hand. There's no need for us to continue fighting, let's just go on separate ways from now," Waller spoke.

"Elon, Christian, you guys okay?" Jay immediately said to his earpiece.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Still alive. I think I tripped into some sh*t though when I was trying to rotate, holy, smells horribad."

Jay smiled, the rock that had been pressing against his heart was finally lifted. Just as he was about to agree to what Waller proposed...

"Do you want power?" the female voice said to him alluringly.

Jay paused for a moment.

"You just have to kill them."

"Is it necessary?"

"Do you want power?"

"Yes."

"Then, I'm telling you the fastest way to get power."

"But- "

"Against people like them, this is battle royale. They won't give up until there's no threat left."

Jay fell into silence. In PUBG, the players you let go could very possibly be the ones that come back, all looted and healed up, that end up taking you out. However, this isn't PUBG, and these are also just people doing their job.

The smoke slowly dissipitated, the eyes of all four of them at the scene met awkwardly...

"So young." That was their first thought after getting to finally take a clear look at the man that they were fighting.

Seeing the crimson light in Jay's eyes, Waller's men was relieved, thinking that the three of them could for sure take care of him. But, they also hesitated upon seeing their deputy captain on the floor.

Jay was also hesitating. He does need to increase his power as quickly as possible, but he still wasn't comfortable with the idea of killing people for it.

"Just reminding you, if you weren't powerful enough this time, those two innovators would've already killed your two buddies. I don't know what kind of enemy you will run into next, and I can't guarantee I can help you protect them."