The Expensive Truth

Loud explosions created sudden tremors on the ground. The Hive began to tilt as explosions from the inside continued. People screamed for help and ran for their lives but everything happened so fast. Civilians and soldiers buried alive under concrete and metals. All because of that one life they wanna take.

Mine.

The thought ate my conscience as I stared over the consequence of my survival; a cloud of dust over  hundreds of corpses buried under the ruins of the Hive.

Their lives in exchange for that one shot of finding out the truth.

"Elon! You will pay!!" Tears of unwavering anger fell off my eyes and increased the humidity inside the suit as I continued to thrust towards the Ozone layer. Their death shall not be in vain, a promise I made at exactly 10 AM of November 8, 2031.

"Cass, scan the atmospheric composition in every layer we pass  through" I had a hunch that something weird was going on.

"On it."

Danger incoming!

The suit's alarms went off! In a split of a second, Cass showed me the distance, estimated time of impact and the kind of projectiles headed towards me.

"Deploying flares" The suit's weaponry is connected to the neural link between Cass and I. So everything is real time and triggers automatically by just thinking of it. Pretty handy, right?

Apparently, they've switched communication channels, cleared up my trojan, and rebooted their servers. The main reason why I can't hear any internal commands anymore.

Good news! The flares worked in stopping the projectiles.

Bad news: quite a number of ships and drones were then on my tail.

Laser beams that could carve a hole through a stadium, homing projectiles, laser bullets and more chased me as a soared. Cass predicted the paths and impact zones and provided me flight paths that I could follow to evade all these deadly blows. I was so focused on the flight path that I could hardly fight back and just fired flares for close calls. After all, this is the alpha test of this suit and my first time piloting anything that flies. Insane, right?

Later on, news networks began broadcasting the aerial battle that's going on. Netizens from across the Globe witnessed how bad of a pilot I was. But luckily, I was still alive.

Moments later, an enemy ship exploded without me firing at it.

"Sir Madrid! Philippine Air Force is at your disposal!" A voice message from an unknown frequency came.

The drones I donated for the country's defense appeared out of nowhere like locusts ready to infest a whole wheatfield. Using their invisibility feature they joined the battle from the enemy's blindspots and destroyed a large number of the enemy's forces that were tailing me.

"Mr. Madrid, go ahead. Let us pay you back a little help will ya?" The Philippine president talked in the same unknown frequency.

The feeling of relief was unreal. All this time, they laid low and waited for the right moment to back me up and they didn't disappoint.

"Thank you, Mr. President!"

I thrust further leaving the aerial battle to them.

But just as I was about to fetch the scan results...

A huge explosion blew me off balance and I gained an abrupt increase in altitude.

A nuclear bomb was detonated right above the city. Getting rid of the drones that lent me hand.

"Fuck?? Elon has nukes?!" I said as soon as I regained balance.

"More hostiles are approaching."

Cass alarmed me.

"Just continue the scanning in the background. Run a deep scan. Let me know the results once it's done." I commanded as I once again exchanged shots with quite a handful of hostile drones and mini ships.

"Cass?" Minutes later..

"Yes. There's quite a concentration of unknown gas pollutants in the Stratosphere to the exosphere. These pollutants aren't from this planet. They're foreign." Cass displayed the structure of its molecules.

The structure of the gases were  somewhat familiar so I let her keep on digging.

"Keep track on the origin, that's quite impossible given the existence of the Van Allen Radiation Belt." This can't be a natural phenomenon. I know there's more to it.

"The pollutants originate from Mars." Cass said.

"Wait, it's 2031. The alignment. Of course! There's a slight opening. Freaking hell! How did I miss this!?" I figured it out and it's insanely evil. What's more insane is that I paused for a second and almost got hit by a laser beam. Obviously, I needed some hand.

The scale of manipulation they did was massive enough to reverse the function of the ML1 causing abrupt changes in the air currents resulting in extreme weather conditions felt worldwide. This was why Elon did everything he could in stopping whatever I was about to do. He knew I wanted to fly and check this area myself.

They really want to destroy this planet for Planet Musk to succeed.

But not on my watch...

"Cass, I need a broadcast frequency. One that's hard to track. The world has to know and I need some time."

"There you have it." In just a second.

"Is it on?" I asked Cass.

"Your nostrils are being broadcasted, Joe." What a very helful AI.

"Oh, hey. Sorry 'bout that. It's just that I'm quite busy at the moment." Great way to start a worldwide broadcast. Good job, self.

"I know you're mad at me for the things you think I did but hear me out. You're about to witness the truth behind all the crappy lies they fed to all of you. Cass, please take care of the presentations will ya?"

"Sure" She replied.

"I'm currently and literally up here in the Stratosphere checking the status of my ML1s in the Ozone layer. And at the same time, running for my life from a horrible death caused by laser beams. At a glance, there seemed to be no problem with the machines. They are still providing enough energy to the surface meaning the nano mites are still working. But if we zoom in on a nanoscale perspective" Cass projected a real time nanoscale perspective on the live stream.

"We could see particles of unknown gases being sucked and being vomitted back by the nano mites. These particles are part of Mars' atmospheric composition. Most of them are even its greenhouse gases." Cass highlighted them and sent live feed links to the public.

"Every 1000 years, a planetary alignment occurs in our Solar System. It means at this point the distance between planets is of its least. This year happens to be the exact year of this phenomenon. With the help of a little route guide in a form of short distance vortices, Elon and his accomplices took advantage of this and created this shortest guided route to pollute our atmosphere with elements from mars unknown to my ML1s. It's basically dumping garbage from one nation to another but in a waaay modern method." I continued as I battled and miraculously stayed alive while explaining.

"As you can see, the ML1 nanobots collect the planet's greenhouse gases and produce energy as usual but the accumulation of foreign pollutants only replaces the eliminated greenhouse gases and exponentially worsens our current situation." I started to pant as I experience quite a few closecalls at that point.

"I know I play a crucial part in this planet's survival. This may even be my fault and negligence. And I am sorry for letting this happen under my nose."

"But unlike before, I'm not only facing nature alone. So I need your help. Please send--"

The broadcast was cut off.

"Is that it??" I asked Cass.

"Yep. They restricted access to mainstream broadcast frequencies already. We'll their AIs are quite disappointing if you'd ask me."

"Thanks to me." I smirked.

Multiple laser shots were fired at almost all directions. I never noticed I was already cornered. A split second decision was needed.

Cass auto-piloted the suit and saved me.

"No. Thanks to me."

Quite the rebuttal that I couldn't argue.

[𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚎𝚍...]